The World Entire: Volume Two: Progeny
by Creedog VanDrey
Summary: The sequel to The World Entire. Peter welcomes his new daughter into the world, and with it, a new series of adventures. The next generation is taking the reins of the Company and they will have their work cut out for them.
1. The Lonely Neutron

Progeny, Chapter 1  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summery: Peter welcomes his new daughter into the world, and with it, a new series of adventures.  
Spoilers: Vaguely Season 3. Most of the spoilers come from my other series "The World Entire."

A/N: This is the sequel (Volume Two) to "The World Entire." The plot points of that series aren't necessary to read this, but I'd recommend it, just to get fully immersed into this world. I'll do my best to recap in the narrative.

I'm telling you right now: _Pay attention to dates_. _The World Entire_ took place inside of a month. This one will span 17 years and will feature flashbacks and flashforwards. I'll give you as much contextual information as I can. And we'll be settling into 2029 for the main plot.

: : :

Chapter 1: The Lonely Neutron

_In 1934, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi created the first nuclear reaction via neutron irradiation. He showed that when a tiny neutron collided with radioactive material, a sustained reaction would occur. This discovery would later become very important during World War II, when scientists with the Manhattan project would successfully put Fermi's discovery to work, producing bombs capable of destruction on scales never imagined before. Truly, the most minor event can set off a chain reaction that can write history. _

: : :

Peter Petrelli  
Primatech Hospital  
Odessa, Texas  
December 12, 2012  
2:56 PM

Peter gripped the fair-skinned hand of the woman beside him, lying back on the hospital bed, while, five feet away, an obstetrician coaxed out their daughter.

A screech echoed through the room. "Sounds like sound manipulation," Dr. Adrianna Fillman joked.

The baby was washed and given to Peter to hold. "Hey, little one," he cooed, "you're just a tiny thing."

He turned to hand the child to her mother when the baby began to glow.

"Luminescence?" the doctor suggested.

Peter, with a worried look, shook his head. He froze time, saying to the bundle, "You just had to be an A-bomb, didn't you?" The baby squirmed in his arms, and Peter grew more panicked, "Nope, you're a copycat just like your daddy. Well, let's get out of here." The waling baby screamed louder and glowed brighter. "Count of three," Peter noted, "One, two…"

: : :

The hospital, and half a mile around it, was consumed by an atomic explosion.

**VOLUME TWO: "PROGENY"**

: : :

_Seven hours earlier…_

Nathan Petrelli  
The Oval Office  
Washington, D.C.  
December 12, 2012  
8:00 AM

"Thank you, Marty," Nathan said to his chief of staff. "And the DOSHA funds?"

"Well-hidden. The Company is sufficiently funded, Mr. President."

"That will be all."

As Marty exited the room, Tracy Petrelli, the First Lady, entered through the side entrance. "Meeting time, Hun?"

"Yes, it is," Nathan replied, walking over to the bookcases, where he and Tracy sat in matching leather armchairs in front of four large monitors, which turned on, revealing four faces. In the first screen, labeled "HARTSDALE", was the blond Meredith Gordon; in the second, above "BARSTOW", the austere stare of Bess Detskij; in the third, above "ODESSA", the dark, bald Haitian; and the last, above "NEW ORLEANS", the round, brunette Amy Carlson.

"So, let's make this quick. Status report?"

Meredith began, "Stellar, Nathan." Tracy momentarily clenched her fists at Meredith's familiar tone, but quickly relaxed. "It's becoming increasingly difficult to cover the existence of Specials. The Antidote is wearing off and Naturals are re-emerging. No rhyme or reason to when and how, but we're very good at taking care of it."

"Very good. How's my brother doing by the way?"

"Both he and Claire are doing a marvelous job. I hope they're enjoying their day off." She grinned widely.

"We'll see," Nathan remarked with a knowing grin, "Bess?"

"Nothing more to report. It's all detailed in my write-up."

"Which I absolutely read," Nathan stated in an earnest tone. "And Mr. Bokor as we're calling you now."

"Your brother has predicted he will become a father today," the Haitian replied.

"It's going to be tight but I should be in Odessa to meet my new niece. It just depends on how it goes with the Japanese ambassador. Carlton?"

"We're understaffed. That doesn't bode well with the hiring freeze."

"I understand your concerns, Amy. I'll see what I can do."

"One other thing," Amy brought up.

"Yes?"

"We had a preacher on the news last night. Nothing major, but he was denouncing Specials as 'freaks of nature.' You know, the typical stuff. When half the world was Specials, these guys were a dime a dozen, but now that we're losing the battle to keep things under wraps, it's not good to have a rallying figure."

"Well, most of them were baseless demagogues, and I can't imagine this guy is any different, but thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'll have my people look into it tomorrow. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to explain to Congress why we need to spend billions of dollars to build giant ocean levees to prevent the Earth cracking in half…"

: : :

_Sixteen years later…_

The Pacific Ocean  
2029

The Pacific Ocean stretched as far as the eye could see. But across the San Andreas Fault, on either side, was a large dam-like structure, acting like a levee stretching in both directions endlessly. Grey concrete jutted up fifteen feet above the sea's surface. A grand spring, the wire thick as a car, was attached every few miles, stretched across the glowing red chasm. Solar-powered pumps sprayed water across the metal spring, boiling on contact.

: : :

Matt Parkman  
Manhattan, New York  
May 1, 2029

Matt Parkman would soon be celebrating his sixty-first birthday. His hair, immaculately combed, was a handsome dark gray. Creases lined his forehead and eyes. His brown eyes were alert and he sat up straight at his desk. He wore a navy blue pinstripe suit over a periwinkle dress shirt with a thin midnight blue tie, pinned down by a gleaming gold police badge-shaped pin. On his wrist was a silver watch, emblazoned with the "SYLAR" trademark, with a mess of gears spinning and ticking behind the black hands and date indicator dials; it was illuminated by an ambient blue light and displayed the time digitally semi-transparently against the crystal face.

Matt sat back at his glass-and-black-metal desk in front of his computer. A clear acrylic rectangle, bowed outward, functioned as his monitor and another piece of clear acrylic as his keyboard, backlit with a compact QWERTY keyboard. Matt tapped a few keys on the right edge of the keyboard. They clicked softly and sent a small electrical buzz into his finger. The keyboard morphed into a large-key, aligned-to-grid, alphabetically-arranged keyboard. Using only his index fingers, Matt typed in the name of his wife followed by his two-digit year of birth as alien glyphs appeared in the password box on his display. A home screen for Parkman Security appeared. Matt pressed his thumb into a fingerprint reader. Another password box popped up on screen. The keyboard switched to a numerical pad on which Matt typed in a seven-digit code. The company logo flipped over, revealing the Primatech Company logo. A line of widgets appeared across the bottom of the screen. Matt tapped the telephone logo. A U.S. map appeared, and four office building graphics appeared above four regions of the country. Matt tapped on the one hovering above New York, and a small org chart appeared with personnel photos. He tapped the top image, one of a graying Mohinder Suresh, with glasses and a salt-and-pepper beard. His personnel file appeared behind the graphic of a ringing phone.

"Matt?" Mohinder's voice emitted from the speakers.

"Hey, Mohinder, what's happening, buddy?"

"I'm researching the cognitive hyperdevelopment of the _Blattaria_ order."

"And in English?"

"I'm trying to make cockroaches smart."

"That sounds futile."

"It is. The anti-cancer virus tests are going well, though."

"Good to hear. And our… side project?"

"Same old, same old. We tracked down four Specials this week. None of them needed extreme measures. What's it like at the top?"

"Not unlike my day job. A lot of sitting around. I don't have to talk to the press, though, so that's a plus."

"Well, Matt, I hate to cut you off, but I've got a class to prepare for."

"No, I let you go. I'm meeting Daphne for dinner anyway. Bye, Mohinder"

"Bye, my friend."

The screen announced the end of the call.

Matt tapped a button on his keyboard and stated, "Exit." All open programs exited and the screen blacked out before starting a slideshow of family photos with a slowly gliding dialog box stating "Streamlining…" over a progress bar.

Matt got up and exited the room. The lights faded and the thermostat switched to power save mode. A robotic floor vacuum started to scoot across the floor and the trash drove itself to the far corner of the room to deposit its contents in a chute.

: : :

A/N: I would like to give my sincere thanks to **heroesfan124** for beta-reading this series for me. It was long past time for me to have my work edited.

To all my readers, thank you for taking the time to return to this world. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Started 5/19/2009. Finished 7/18/2009.


	2. Storm Clouds

Progeny, Chapter 2  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summery: In sixteen years, the world will need a new class of heroes, but until that day comes, it's struggling just to get by.  
Spoilers: Vaguely Season 3. If you missed the spoiler notice from the previous chapter, this spoils a lot of my other series, "The World Entire."

A/N: For those of you who are active on HeroesWiki, I have my own section to document everything "The World Entire." I wouldn't have started the thing had another user not started the ball rolling for me. Though it's popular on , I found had it had bled over to other _Heroes_ Fic Recs, so I thought it'd reached a level of relevance worthy of a User section at HeroesWiki.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… Peter welcomes his newborn daughter, an empathic mimic who absorbs his induced radioactivity, with tragic results. Company Head Nathan converses with his Regional Directors. And sixteen years in the future, a destiny is waiting to be fulfilled.

: : :

Chapter 2: Storm Clouds

_The speed of light is some 88,000 times the speed of sound, which would seem rather poorly planned. In the event of a lightning strike, the warning signs—thunder—would not arrive until long after the disaster has occurred, while the actual visible demonstration of it… is instantaneous. This is so much like life, where tragedy comes in a flash, and it is only long after that we hear the rumblings that announce the decimation. Perhaps it's just Mother Nature's way of saying we ought to bow to the storm cloud rather than try to tame the wind. _

: : :

Elle and Audrey  
Primatech Research Facility  
Barstow, California  
2:55 PM

Danny Pine, both his forearms converted into metal, smashed the handcuffs around his wrists. Ten feet away, Elle passionlessly sent small arcs of electricity into his arms, causing him to scream and thrash about, trying to get close enough to attack the much smaller woman. Behind him was his cell, the thick bulletproof glass shattered to pieces.

Inside the open cell was Audrey Hanson, hanging up-side-down from an air duct by her legs. Against the back wall was a metal coil recessed into the wall. Near the top was a mess of damaged electrical equipment that Audrey was studying.

Down below, Elle made two finger-guns with her hands and held them by her side. "C'mon partner, make my day." She quick-drew her hands and fired off two beams of electricity, knocking Pine down. He metalized his back and crashed through the concrete behind him. "And that's why they call me Lightning Lass," added Elle, in an ever-thickening cowgirl accent.

Pine shook off the fall and climbed back into his cell. He de-metalized his body, leapt up, and, with metal hands, latched onto the air duct. He kept one hand locked around the duct and used the other to grab hold of Audrey's wrist. Without skipping a beat, Audrey twisted her free arm around, grabbed a multi-tool from her back pocket, yanked out the main electrical wire of the converter, and stabbed Pine's hand with it. His arm lurched back and he swung by his one arm. Audrey stuck the wire into his forehead, causing him to twitch and release his hold. He plummeted to the floor, the metalized back of his head cracking the cement. His eyes, however, crossed, before he slipped into unconsciousness.

Back up near the ceiling, Audrey taped up a wire and flicked a switch on the electrical box. The metal ring began to hum pleasingly and Audrey's multi-tool was wrenched from her hand to the magnetically charged ring.

"What are we going to do about him?" Elle asked, kicking Pine's side childishly.

Surveying the mangled metal shackles sliding across the floor toward the wall, she replied, "Doberman chain." Audrey released her legs and landed gracefully on the ground with a small grunt.

"Hmm?"

"It's a type of collar for large dogs, made out of metal links that poke the dog if they pull on it too hard."

"Kinky. And you know about these how?" Elle teased.

Half-grinning, Audrey replied, "I've got a dog."

"I know. Didn't you name her Pixiebelle?"

"Yep. She's a 110-pound Bullmastiff mix. She enjoys pulling up mailboxes for fun."

"Remind me to never accept a dinner invitation from you."

"I would never invite you to dinner."

"Yeah, that doesn't surprise me." Elle climbed out of the cell just in time to see Gabriel and Ryan walk by with a bound man, a beanie pulled over his head, floating like a balloon by Gabriel's side.

Without having to be asked, Gabriel replied, "Special with neurocognitive deficit. He turns off higher-brain functions."

"Ooh, zombie-maker," Elle noted excitedly.

"Yeah, but he needs eye contact," Ryan explained, indicating the face cover.

Audrey, dusting herself off, came out. "Hey, Ryan. Hello, Sylar." She then pulled out her gun and shot Gabriel twice in the chest.

As Gabriel lay healing on the far wall, Bess walked down. In her Russian accent, she commented, "Ah, I see Mr. Pine is back in his cell. Good job. I can have maintenance put in the new window."

"Audrey shot Gabriel," Elle tattled.

Bess took a passionless glance at Gabriel returning to his feet while catching the two bullets being forced from his chest through his blood-stained white dress shirt. She told Audrey, "Miss Hanson, I believe we've already had this conversation. When you shoot Mr. Gray, I would ask that you not use your company weapon. Or do it on Company property. Look at all this blood that the janitor is going to have to clean up."

"Sorry, Boss," Audrey replied.

Bess nodded and turned to Gabriel and Elle. "I figured you two would be on your way to Odessa by now. The Texas one."

Gabriel's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, I almost forgot. C'mon, Sweetie. Uncle Gabe and Aunt Ellie need to welcome their new niece into the world." He took hold of his wife's hand and led her out. She showed none of the enthusiasm her husband did.

Elle allowed her husband to drag her down the hallway, noting, "You weren't this excited about Andrew."

"Oh, c'mon, at this rate, Nate's gonna pop out another dozen before he dies. Pete, on the other hand…"

"Ooh, I hope the next Nathan-spawn is a girl. Tracy told me she wanted one. Or maybe a cat. I wasn't paying attention."

: : :

Meredith Gordon  
Dallas, Texas  
December 22, 2012  
3:04 PM

"CANCELLED" flashed in red on screen next to the flight to Odessa, while all the other flights flashed with "DELAYED" in green.

Meredith, dressed in a three-piece fuchsia skirt suit, answered her ringing phone. "Tracy? What the _hell_ is going on?" she asked hurriedly with an eye glued to the departures board. After hearing Tracy's reply, her head jerked to the window where she peered out, wondering if she could see Odessa from here.

Her face pale, she breathed out "Damn" heavily. Taking a moment to collect herself, she asked, "I'm guessing Claire is okay?"

Tracy's voice seemed so resolute, even more than usual, "Not that I wouldn't be worried about my child, but you need to get to New York immediately. Nathan is… well, let's just say you just got a promotion."

Meredith fell into a nearby chair. "H-how is he?"

For once, Tracy's voice didn't hold an ounce of jealousy, "Just get there."

"All the flights…"

"Samuels will be there within the hour with Air Force Two."

Without saying good-bye, Tracy hung up abruptly.

Meredith looked down at her sleek phone as Tracy's image disappeared. She brought the phone to her cheek again, and stated, "Call Matt Parkman."

When the man answered, she stated, "Matt, it's Meredith. I'm gonna need a favor…"

: : :

Peter Petrelli  
Odessa, Texas  
December 22, 2012  
3:58 PM

The tiny, bare newborn girl sucked on her father's thumb as she slept against his equally bare shoulder. After trekking half a mile, Peter finally found some buildings that hadn't been completely knocked over by the nuclear explosion that destroyed Primatech's Odessa campus.

Peter happened upon what used to be a mid-priced clothing store in a strip mall. All the windows were blown off their frames and the fluorescent lights were obliterated, leaving the inside of the store dark. Mannequins, disfigured by the heat and peppered with glass shards, lay on the ground like surreal corpses. As Peter walked across the uneven tiled floor, he saw a mess of items that didn't belong: mobile phone components, fast food toys, car side-view mirrors, and an unopened but heavily dented can of collard greens, among other scattered items.

Peter found a pair of sweatpants hanging from a clothes rack leaning against the wall. Carefully holding his napping daughter with one hand, he levitated a foot off the floor, and used telekinesis to slip them on. Not wanting to risk waking his daughter, he eschewed a shirt and found a pair of kitten-themed slippers to walk in.

There was a rustling at the back of the store and Peter slinked over to investigate, readying a handful of fire. What he found was the bare back of a familiar petite blond woman slipping on a silk robe.

"Claire?" he whispered.

Claire turned her head and quickly finished wrapping herself in the garment. "Hey, Peter. What happened?" She spun and her eyes fell to the nude sleeping infant.

Peter looked down at his daughter, "She's a mimic like me. Borrowed my radioactivity and had herself a nice tantrum."

"That 'tantrum' your daughter had cost me that lovely red sweater-and-slacks set I was wearing for the Christmas party."

"Sorry. Need some shoes?" He floated a pair of fire-engine red Crocs to Claire's side.

Claire took a hold of them and tossed them into a pile of clearance underwear. "I'll go barefoot." She approached the pair and gazed on the girl's soft face. "What's her name?" she whispered.

"In all the excitement, I haven't gotten to that step. Ma wanted me to name her after an angel."

"Anyone you particularly like?"

"I memorized the list. There's Cassiel. The angel of tears."

"Cassie's pretty, but I wouldn't want that namesake hanging over my head."

"There's Lailah, the angel of conception."

"I think the irony's a little thick with one," Claire noted.

"Haniel, the angel of harmonious love."

"Hannah," Claire mused, "I could work with that."

"Hannah it is. Should I give her 'Claire' as her middle name?"

"Make it 'Sandra'," Claire declared quietly, "Or, rather 'Alexandra'; flows better."

"Hannah Alexandra Petrelli," Peter repeated, "Now to get her somewhere safe."

Claire hooked her arm around Peter's. "Ready."

"Claire, Hannah's a ticking time bomb. It could be a while before she's safe to be around. And you know you have no obligation to…"

Claire cut him off, "It was always part of the plan that I would help raise her. Now, take me away."

: : :

Peter Petrelli and Claire Bennet  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 20, 2029

A group of three entered the building. The first was the dark-haired Peter Petrelli, who, despite being 49 years old, still looked like a spry man of thirty. The second was the blonde Claire Bennet, who, at 38, still looked in her early twenties. The third was a girl of sixteen with caramel-colored hair, walking between the two, bouncing excitedly.

: : :

A/N: Just get used to being teased about the future. I will get to it, but I'm finding that the build-up is just as intriguing as the actual adventure that will occur in 2029. For now, I'm content just to see how ominous I can make Hannah's birthday.

Thanks to **heroes124** for betaing.

Started 6/8/2009. Finished 7/30/2009.


	3. Survival of the Nicest

Progeny, Chapter 3  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summery: Air Force One approaches Odessa. Peter and Claire find a new home for his daughter.  
Spoilers: Volume 3's "I Am Become Death," but by now, we're so firmly entrenched in this AU, that the only thing I'm really spoiling is "The World Entire."

A/N: For the record, anytime I give an excuse for why a chapter is late, it's total B.S. Like I'll occasionally blame my beta even if it's not her fault. Or my cats. Or global warning. Frankly, you'll be able to see through my transparent lies.

On an unrelated note, this chapter was delayed by Daylight Savings Time. You know how that is.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… Sixteen years later, it's Take Your Daughter to Work day as Peter remembers the day that changed his life forever. Meredith gets a call from Tracy promoting her.

: : :

Chapter 3: Survival of the Nicest

_It seems that most of the natural world did not get the memo on "survival of the fittest," because everyday animals of all types flout this principle. Richard Dawkins wrote a book entitled _The Selfish Gene_, noting that "selfish" was such an unsuitable term. Rather than selfish, nature tends to be altruistic. Why else would the majority of ants and bees be sterile, spending their lives protecting and pampering their mother, the queen, if their own genes will not be passed on? The theories of kin selection and inclusive fitness tell us that we are not alone in our generosity; it is encoded in our very DNA. It is the deceit, the envy, and the hatred that is unnatural. The one who works for the benefit of the community, the enemies that lay down arms to embrace one another as brothers, the parent who sacrifices everything so that their child may prosper, these people are fulfilling their duty as a citizen of Earth. _

: : :

Nathan, Tracy, and Andrew  
Air Force One  
Just Over Odessa, Texas  
December 22, 2012  
2:53 PM

"Fifteen minutes to touch-down, Mr. President," the voice over the intercom spoke.

Andrew's face was pressed against the window.

"Are we almost there?" he asked for the fifty-third time.

"Yes, Sweetie," his mother replied.

"I'd say someone is excited about meeting his new cousin."

"Are you sure it's a girl?" he asked forlornly.

"Or else he's a very unlucky boy," Nathan replied, grinning.

"Nathan!" Tracy chastised, "Save it for the War Room."

"Is Miss Caitlin nice?"

Nathan and Tracy exchanged guarded glances.

"Yes," Tracy replied, "she's very nice."

The booming sound, the flash of white-yellow light, and the concussive blast occurred all at once, rattling the plane as if it had been hit by a giant wielding a colossal sledgehammer. The lights went out and sirens screamed as secret service agents poured into the room. Agent Braham declared, "Both pilots are incapacitated. The autopilot will do it's best to land us, but it doesn't look good. Should we prep the pod?" The First Family huddled together as Nathan screamed out, "No, bring me Professor Suresh!"

Agent Lake raced out of the room and dragged in Mohinder. "Nathan, what do you need?!" Mohinder screamed over the noise. Despite the severe turbulence, Mohinder had no trouble standing.

"I need you to tear open a hole in the plane."

"Are you insane?"

"I'm going to save my family first. I'll come back for you all later." He looked at Andrew, clutching onto Tracy. He tore off his jacket and loosened his tie.

"Don't worry about me, sir," Mohinder noted, "I'll just jump." He grinned broadly.

Nathan reached into his desk and pulled out a small metal case. Inside were a dozen shots of clear liquid. He tossed them to Agents Braham and Henry. "Take them at your own risk. If your powers return, use them." He turned to Mohinder, "Do it now."

As Braham and Henry threw off their coats to prepare for the injection, Mohinder stretched his hands and began to tear at the wall, ripping off the elegant furnishing before reaching the thick hull. "This is going to hurt," he muttered to himself before thrashing his fingers into the thick metal, and pulling outward with bleeding fingers. He tore at one side, opening a hole big enough to fit several people.

No sooner than the hole was opened did Nathan fly out with his wife and son clutched tightly in his arms. He landed the best he could outside on a sandy patch outside the Burnt Toast Diner and immediately postured to return to flight.

"Nathan!" Tracy called.

"I have to, Trace. I love you both." He kissed his wife, hugged his son, and leapt back into the air.

Tracy watched the rumbling plane far above, and could barely make out the tiny speck that was her husband reaching the plane. Moments later, one of the wings exploded, shooting flames that engulfed the plane as it fell into a nosedive while Tracy look on, stunned.

: : :

Coyote Sands, NM  
December 22, 2012

Peter and Claire, with Hannah in Peter's arms, appeared in the desert camp.

"Coyote Sands?" Claire asked.

"Yeah, it's got all the amenities. Shelter, food, water, and most importantly, privacy."

"And sand. A _lot_ of sand. And wood rot."

"Okay, so it's a fixer-upper. Give me five minutes and I'll have it good as new."

"Before that… can we go back to the food? We all just did a full-body regeneration and I don't know about you, but I'm starving."

Peter grinned, "I'll go get us some food." He carefully handed Hannah to Claire, "I took her radioactivity. She'll be fine." Peter teleported away.

Claire looked at the tiny baby in her arms, only a few hours old, sleeping quietly. "I bet you're hungry," Claire whispered softly. Hannah shifted in her arms, cooing. Claire mentally chided herself, remembering that Hannah would have Peter's enhanced hearing. Claire noticed Hannah wriggling and her eyes moving underneath her eyelids, dreaming. She suddenly burst into tears, screaming.

Claire bounced Hannah in her arms, trying to quiet her, when she noticed the light. Hannah was glowing again, causing radiation burns on Claire's arms. "No, no, no, no, no," Claire pleaded, "it's okay."

But Hannah exploded again.

: : :

Monica and Lyle  
Promised Land Baptist Church  
Foidefait Bay, Louisiana  
December 23, 2012

Dressed in her Sunday best, Monica walked up the aisle, and took a seat. Following her, while fiddling uncomfortably with his tie, was Lyle in khakis and a blue blazer.

"I hate dressing for church," he grumbled.

"You come to work every day in a suit and tie."

"Yeah, but this reminds me of Mom dragging us to Easter every year."

Monica ruffled Lyle's hair, unsurprised that he didn't bother to fix it.

The choir director, a full-figured woman of Hispanic descent, stepped up to the microphone, and noted, "We'll be starting this morning with Hymn Number 475 'Victory in Jesus'."

During the hymn, Monica surveyed the pastor. The Reverend Gideon Davenport was a man of medium build and dark skin in his fifties with a head of short black hair and a full salt-and-pepper beard. He surveyed the audience with suspicion, his eyes cold, and his mouth a straight line. However, it curved into a simple smile and he put on a pair of sapphire-tinted reading glasses that caught the light, making his eyes gleam. In a commanding baritone, he spoke, "The scripture for today is from the Book of Deuteronomy, the Eighteenth Chapter, Verses nine through fourteen…"

After a breath he loudly declared, "'When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you _anyone_…" he paused to repeat the word, "_anyone_ who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, _or one_ who practices witchcraft, _or_ a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer…"

It was at this point that Monica noticed that Rev. Davenport was reading from a different translation that her own New International Version or the Good News Version translations found in the pews.

"This is the Word of the Lord," Davenport declared after finishing the passage.

"Thanks be to God," responded the congregation, including Monica. Lyle mumbled it afterwards as he darted his eyes around to see if anyone had noticed.

Davenport began his sermon, "Colonial Massachusetts. February of 1692. Good, God-fearing folk just like us accused twenty people of being witches, so we burnt them at the stake!" he bellowed triumphantly, slamming his fist on the pulpit. After a moment, as his congregants sat back up after flinching backwards, he put on a grin and noted, "That's not true. We hanged them." He let out a chortle before amending, "And for one unlucky fellow, smashed him with rocks."

There was a chuckle from the section where the teenage youths sat together.

To that area, he noted, "No, it's alright. We were quite creative at that time."

Davenport stepped down from the pulpit and began to address the congregation from the steps of the stage. "But these people were not witches. The girls who started the witch hunt, they were nine and eleven. Nine and eleven… years old. According to the records we have, the Puritan suspected them of witchcraft because they flailed about, more violently than epileptics. They make strange noises. They threw things. Sounds like demonic possession to me. Actually, sounds like adolescence." There was laughter among the congregation.

"'Soothsayer.' It's another word for diviner. Or psychic. Or precog. It is 'abominable'. The book mentions sorcery, which it does not elaborate on. Maybe it's creating fire from nothing. Or moving objects with your mind. It talks about mediums, those that converse with or raise the dead." A hush fell over the sanctuary.

With spine-chilling sincerity, he related, "We all knew people who took the shot. Who became 'more than human,' as they called it. Frankly, I wonder if they became less human. Humans were not meant to see the future. They weren't _meant_ to be immortal. We were made in his image, but we weren't meant to be more like God that God intended. And some of them were our friends, I know. My point is not that these people were bad people, just that they committed sins. As we are all sinners. They committed sins that will easily be forgiven by God. Sins that God felt right to take away. 'If you right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.' Some died, yes, but do not think I'm standing up here and parroting the hardly-Reverend Phelps with my sign 'Thank God for the Epidemic'." He mimed waving a sign to a frowning audience. "I will not make the same mistake that William Stoughton made and call these poor souls _witches_.

"No, the Epidemic was another Flood. I love the Flood story. I tell it every time I visit the children. At my previous church, a little one asked me after telling the story, 'Why was God so mean to all those people? I thought God loved everybody.' Needless to say, I was speechless. I'd been a pastor maybe a year and a half, and I didn't have all those good responses thought out yet. But I came up with one not too long after. I realized I'd left out the most important part. The rainbow. Which is pretty foolish of me, because it's invariably the kids' favorite part. So, now, I finish the story with this:

"God did love those people. You know how I know? Because of the rainbow. Rainbows only happen after it's rained. It rained for forty days and forty nights. Where did all the rain come from? I tell them this: God was crying for the people, for their souls that he couldn't save and lives he couldn't change. God grieved from them, just like he grieved for those who died in the Epidemic, after losing their way. He did. They say it was overcast for two weeks in New York, and of course here, we had Ophelia giving the levees another run for them money. But I remember the rainbow. I remember God letting me know that this would never happen again. And he was right; Pinehearst was engulfed in holy flames. Never again."

He paused a moment to transition into his next story. "I was biology major in college in… well, Lord, a long while ago—God has seen fit to age me as the years go by—anyway, I had a roommate named Tommy. Tommy was a nice guy, but he had a few… hobbies which I'd only heard about, because I was a boy raised in Shreveport who once got his hide reddened by his Daddy for being caught with one single cigarette. It should not surprise you to learn that Tommy joined a fraternity. For him it was harmless fun. At least it was until the thirtieth of March, 1974. In those days, traffic laws were a little more lax and…"

Once Davenport got the point of the story that including the phrase "rightful shunning," Monica was glowering up at the pastor, until she felt a touch on her hand. She turned to the person seated beside her, a woman of Chinese descent, in her mid-thirties, smiling kindly. "Wipe that scowl off your face," she remarked, "it's like this every week. Last week, he made some stumbling metaphor about the Mark of Cain."

Monica did a quick glance around, before replying, "So if he's really up there muckraking against an extinct breed of people, why come here every week?"

"I've been going to this church my whole life. I've seen five pastors and at least as many interims on that pulpit. All my friends and all my kids' friends go here. I'll be here long after he's gone. I take it you used to be evolved."

"Guilty as charged," Monica lied fluently. "Law of averages says every other person in this congregation had an ability. Why do they listen to him scorn them like they're little demons?"

"Oh, were you here the last week before Lent?"

Monica muffled a chuckle as best she could.

"Look, sister, you're overestimating the number of people that listen to the sermon and underestimating the number of people who lost people during the Epidemic and haven't gotten closure. Pinehearst dissolved overnight the day before. And the terrorists were executed by the government almost immediately and then never mentioned again."

Monica bit her tongue and nodded. She paused a moment before asking, "Did you…?"

"Take the shot? Nah. A few of my friends did, but none of them crashed to the ground or ran into a wall or anything."

"Okay," Monica replied, trying to elicit more.

"I supposed I think those powers were a gift from God we weren't ready for. A kind of taste of Heaven so that we'd have faith. I mean, I'm kind of glad they're gone, but…" The woman shook her head, and noted, "I'm babbling. Grace-Ann," she covertly extended her hand.

"Monica."

Interrupting the conversation, Rev. Davenport stated as he concluded his sermon, "Amen. Let us pray. Oh, Lord God, King of King, we humbly bow our heads in reverence, and take this moment to thank you for your divine justice, for your scouring hand. We ask that you continue to root out the evil in the world…"

: : :

Peter Petrelli  
Coyote Sands, NM  
December 22, 2012

When Peter teleported back with two large takeout bags from his favorite Italian eatery, he found Coyote Sands a wasteland.

Several hundred yards away, he found Claire standing shoulder-deep in a pond, apparently naked, with a similar unclothed Hannah sleeping against her shoulder.

Peter realized, "She's a mimic. She mimicked the radioactivity after I took it."

"_Ya think_?" Claire replied sharply.

"Let me see her. I'm gonna have to take her natural ability."

"You're getting me clothes first."

"We're going to have to get away quick, thought. Another nuclear explosion on U.S. soil? This place is gonna be swarmed with feds."

: : :

Liam Samuels  
The Oval Office  
Washington, D.C.  
December 23, 7:26 PM

"…have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukah, and a wonderful winter season. Thank you and God bless," Samuels concluded, as the spotlight went out and camera switched off.

Samuels bowed his head down, running his fingers through his dark hair. He was approached by his chief of staff, Richard Barnes, who complimented him on his telecast.

Samuels laughed sadly through tired eyes. "So, any word on whether I've got this job for four weeks or four years?"

Barnes rolled his shoulders, "This situation is without precedence. Congress will hold a special session after the New Year and they'll either confirm or deny you the next term. I think it'll depend a lot on how you handle the next few weeks."

With masked interest, he asked, "What do you think my chances are?"

Barnes replied with sincerity, "Right now, you'd barely scrape by." Conjecturally, he added, "Pick a good VP. Parade around a few scapegoats for the bombings—"

"Explosions," Samuels corrected.

"—bombings. Then your chances are better. Nothing brings a nation together besides tragedy."

"This is not how I wanted to become President."

"Life is what happens when we're making plans."

"If you want to sprout aphorisms, write a book."

"I'll take that to heart, sir."

Another aide approached Samuels. "Tracy Petrelli's been calling pretty regularly."

"Damn, I'm not ready for Tracy yet. Tell Dahlia to keep her placated for another thirty minutes and I'll meet her in the Red Room."

The aide wasn't finished, "And a Meredith Gordon has requested a meeting with you. I don't who she is but she's got—"

Samuels cut her off, "I'll take care of it." The tone indicated that the conversation was over and the aide walked away.

Once in private company again, Barnes asked, "Who is this Gordon lady? Five years ago, she's keeping off the grid, hiding in Mexico under the names of _Dallas_ characters, and next thing you know, she's got a direct line to the President."

"Nathan had a pet project, a totally secret government-funded organization that dealt with Specials. Tracy called me yesterday and implemented protocols that I thought only Nathan had authorization to. She had me pick up Gordon and take her to a secure location in Hartsdale, New York. Turns out this woman is running the damn thing."

"Shouldn't you have _detained _her? I mean, a _nuclear_ explosion in some mid-sized town in Texas that just _happens_ to take down Air Force One_ three days before Christmas_? And we can't even get an accurate report because the only organization with jurisdiction on Specials is completely sheltered? I'm more worried about our intelligence agencies rioting than the common citizens!"

"I'm going to need you to trust me, Rick. This situation's going to get more complicated before it gets less."

: : :

Peter, Claire, and Hannah  
Kirishitan Cathedral  
Ikitsuki, Japan  
December 22, 2012

"It's a church," was the first thing that Claire said when they arrived at the deserted church. They sauntered down the aisle together, looking around.

"Hiro Nakamura hid out here a while back."

"Explains the web," Claire replied, noting the massive web of yarn filling the narthex. She noticed several pictures of her, several with her in her leather-and-dark-hair persona. She found an article on the Costa Verde Disaster, with her picture, among others, paper clipped. "He was trying fix the timeline."

"He couldn't do it. Time travel is a messy business."

"Why here?"

"It's an isolated island off the coast of Japan. No way for anyone to get hurt."

"We'll make it work. Now, goddammit—" Claire paused, looked around, made the sign of the cross, and continued, "now, _goshdarnit__**, **_I'm starving. Give me some spaghetti or I'm liable to eat the baby."

A few hours later, the church looked a little more habitable; lights were strung up, the dust and debris cleared away, and there were boxes of furniture ready to be assembled.

Peter held a list in his hand. "Okay, so I've taken away her empathic mimicry, her induced radioactivity, precognitive dreaming to stop the nightmares, power absorption to stop her from taking my ability to stop her, power negation for the same reason, and time travel for obvious reasons. I think we're good."

"For my benefit, could you take away flight?" Claire asked, behind him.

Peter spun around and saw his daughter floating twenty feet in the air. He flew up to her and dropped her in Claire's arms. "Done."

"Thanks, I'd put her on a leash, but lord knows she'd burn it off." Hannah at this moment was sucking on a flaming thumb.

"Shh," Peter suddenly whispered, tilting his head. "I heard something. Get down; protect her." Claire crouched behind the front pew with Hannah, wishing she had something to fight with. Instead, she surveyed the exits and devised escape plans.

Peter softly treaded down the aisle, lighting a flame in his hand and turning invisible. From her hiding spot, Claire heard a brief struggle, the cackle of fire and then electricity. She clung tighter to Hannah and waited.

"Gabriel?" she heard Peter's voice.

"Pete? What gives?" came the familiar voice of Claire's other uncle.

Claire got up and walked into the antechamber, where she found Peter and Gabriel, both healing from wounds, while around them, Hiro's web slowly burned down.

"Hey, Claire Bear," Gabriel noted sweetly.

"Don't call me that, Gabriel," Claire snipped.

"That the kid?"

"Hannah," Peter noted.

"Mazel tov," Gabriel walked up and Claire handed her uncle the baby, "Reminds me of Noah when he was little." After a moment, he recited, "She's an empathic mimic like you, Pete. Her fear mechanism caused her to activate your radioactivity. You tried to take it from her, but since she's a mimic, she copied it right back, which is why Coyote Sands, as well as Odessa, is a nuclear fallout zone. You were smart enough to take both her radioactivity and mimicry, and a few more things to make it easier for Claire to help raise her."

"It's freaky when you do that," Claire noted as Peter took his child.

"Well, the U.S. thought there was a terrorist attack yesterday. Twelve thousand are dead. No group is taking credit, unsurprisingly, so we've got religious nuts proclaiming Armageddon and conspiracy nuts proclaiming pulled another Kennedy."

"Another Kennedy? Wait, what's wrong with my dad?" Claire demanded as her face was torn with fear. Peter's expression matched hers.

Gabriel grimaced. "You haven't heard. Air Force One was flying over Odessa when Hannah blew up. The blast didn't hit them but the shock wave did."

"Oh, God! And Tracy and Andrew?!"

"They're fine. Nathan saved them, but he went back to the plane to save more and it exploded. The plane crashed within the evacuation zone, so we can't get in there. Nathan was our trump card when it came to the government. Tracy's doing her best, but…"

"But…?" Peter seethed.

"Look, he's my brother, too. But too much is going down. They've already sworn Samuels into office. Meredith was made Director. And then you two went missing. We're still reeling and… we'll figure this out, but there's a good chance—"

"How'd you find us?" Claire asked abruptly.

"Molly Walker," Gabriel explained, "we need you back."

"Look," Peter explained, "we still don't know what Hannah's capable of. Until she learns to maintain some control over her abilities, I can't risk her causing any more deaths."

"I get that, Pete, I really do. Since Costa Verde, we had to keep Noah in a titanium-lined cell. There's still dangerous Specials out there."

"Look, I can teleport in whenever you need me," offered Peter, "but not for too long."

"And Claire?"

"I didn't realize I was so invaluable," she teased.

"Hey, you're welcome to go on maternity leave. We've got enough of your blood stored up for a while."

"One of us has to be here at all times to watch Hannah," proclaimed Peter.

"Hey, I get it. We'll work with you." Gabriel pulled out two mobile phone boxes from a duffel bag and handed them to Peter and Claire. "Keep them on at all times. And one more thing."

"Yeah,"

He gestured to Hannah. "Keep her safe. I've got a watch to build."

Gabriel nodded to them, floated a few feet off the group, and flew out of the room.

"You two were surprisingly cordial."

"We bonded," Claire explained and didn't say another word on the subject.

: : :

A/N: Okay, 2012 is just entirely too interesting. I may be spending even more time than I thought here.

I have a proposition for my readers. I'd like to create a feedback loop. In addition to just praise and criticisms (which I love regardless), I want you to take a more active role in reviewing. What characters interest you? Which storylines are engaging? Should I dwell on the fallout of the Odessa Disaster, or move along to 2029 and tell the stories of the next generation? I love answering questions, because I do put a lot of thought into my characters and plotlines. I love theories, and I encourage you to come up with Epileptic Trees. Maybe they'll be Jossed, or maybe it'll be a case of I Knew It, or just as likely I'll say Sure Why Not. Yes, I do visit ; how you'd know? If you're a fan of fiction, it's a must-see, but I'm warning you, TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.

Also, many thanks to my beta, **heroesfan124**.

Started 6/10/2009. Finished 7/17/2009.


	4. Stages of Life

Progeny, Chapter 4  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summery: Peter and Claire rejoin the ever-changing Company, reconnecting with friends new and old.  
Spoilers: Vaguely Season 3. If you missed the spoiler notice from the previous chapter, this spoils a lot of my other series, "The World Entire."

A/N: I know this chapter has been a long time coming, but my life has been in a slight dishevel for a while. Ironically, I've had loads of time where I could be working on this, but I was frankly uninspired until recently. One problem is that I lost the flash drive with the original version of this chapter, so I've had to rewrite from almost scratch.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… President Nathan Petrelli saves his family from a doomed flight aboard Air Force One, but doesn't survive himself. Peter teleports Claire and his daughter Hannah to Coyote Sands to raise her, only to have her explode again, so Peter takes them to a remote Japanese island. Monica and Lyle attend the church of an annoying anti-Special demagogue. Vice President Liam Samuels takes Nathan's place as the reelected President.

: : :

Chapter 4: Stages of Life

_Dutch developmental psychologist Erik Erikson proposed a theory of psychosocial development. He split the human lifespan into eight stages, from infancy to seniority, attaching to each stage an essential need to be met. Children grow to understand the world. Parents learn to care for a child. And for those fortunate enough to grow into old age, they have the opportunity to look back on their life and determine meaning. We watch as each new generation takes its place, molding the world, making it better. _

: : :

Gabriel Gray and Meredith Gordon  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
December 28, 2012

The ceremony was supposed to start at 2:00, but it was 2:23 when Peter finally teleported in with Claire and the week-old Hannah. Claire laid a soft kiss on Hannah's head before Peter teleported out just as quickly with an apologetic wave to an unfettered Meredith.

The small crowd that had gathered was mingling in front of the stage. A few looked bored and Bess Detskij looked thoroughly inconvenienced. But finally, Meredith signaled Gabriel to the stage.

Gabriel casually jumped onto the stage and pulled a small jewelry box out of his coat pocket. He noticed his tied was askew, so he halfway fixed it while Meredith climbed the stairs without hurry.

"Hey," he called out to the room, as there was no microphone on stage. The crowd took a minute to settle down, and he continued, "So I didn't actually prepare anything, but I'm just here to award Meredith here her watch."

He opened a box, revealing a dainty woman's gold watch. Meredith politely grinned, noting aloud to the audience, "Well, since none of y'all can see it, it's got a little picture of my family behind the face, which is really nice. Thanks, Gabriel."

After Meredith slipped it on, Gabriel excitedly beckoned, "Light up" while making a "burst of flame" gesture with his hands. After a cursory glance, Meredith acquiesced, and produced a ball of flames around her hand. Proudly, Gabriel explained, "Completely fire-proof, and charged by heat."

Meredith chuckled appreciatively.

Gabriel announced to the crowd, as an afterthought, "I give you your new Company Director."

He swung out one arm to Meredith, who performed the weakest of bows. "Thank you. Now… get back to work," she teased.

Bess immediately began to clap, and the rest of the crowd followed suit.

: : :

Gabriel Gray and Bess Detskij  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
5/4/2015

_Two and a half years later…_

The lights were dimmed in the atrium. Two blocks of chairs, filled with Company employees, arranged in perfect squares facing the stage and separted by an aisle. Two spotlights shone on a lone podium on the stage.

Gabriel took his place at the podium, wearing in his best suit, a forest-green pinstripe, and tried not to fidget. Beside him stood Meredith, sporting a brand new peach-colored skirt-and-blouse ensemble, doing her very best to look austere.

The instant the clock at the back of the room reached 8:00 in the morning, Bess Detskij, in a steel gray long-cut pant suit, strode confidently on stage.

Gabriel spoke into the podium mic, reading from a script, "Welcome, employees of the Company, to the Passing the Torch ceremony. I'll be your emcee this evening." Bess cleared her throat. Staring daringly at her, Gabriel over-prounced, "My apologies. This wonderful Monday morning."

As a projection screen lowered behind him, Gabriel pulled out a watch box. Behind him, a diagram for a wrist watch appeared.

After a dramatic sign, Gabriel announced, "Today, I'll be giving Bess her watch to _commiserate_ her promotion to Company Director. Her watch is a stainless steel analog, automatically corrected to the Atomic Clock. You'll notice a number of dials in the background, including a compass, month and date, and even GPS coordinates. If you want to know how I was able to include all these features, it's because I spent a year designing it. Miss Detskij has had this promotion in the works for a while."

Bess was shooting daggers to Gabriel, who summarily ignored them and handed Bess the watch. "Still hate me?" he whispered.

"Always," Bess replied with cheer. She turned to face Meredith, who approached her, with script in hand.

Meredith read, "Elizaveta Detskij, please raise your right hand." Bess's hand was long since raised. "Do you solemnly swear to uphold your duties as Company Director?"

"I do."

"Then, I, Meredith Gordon, do bequeath to you, all powers and privileges of my office. Lead this Company to greatness."

Meredith extended her hand. Bess met her more than halfway, vigorously shaking it. Bess rushed to the podium. The entire audience, almost in unison, slumped down in their chairs. Bess inhaled slowly and spoke regally, "I wish to thank Gabriel for his lovely watch and Meredith for her faith in me." She took another breath, and finished quickly, "Now, I invite you all to join me in the main containment bay for a reception." With that she walked off, leaving a stunned—and firmly situated—audience in their seats.

The main containment bay was the largest room in the Company's headquarters. It was an austere, cement-lined room typically used to house multiple belligerent bag-and-tags before they could be processed. It now housed two tables of hor d'oeuvres and a large sheet cake.

Matt, Daphne, Mohinder, and Barbara stood together, drinking champagne. "She does realize it's eight-thirty in the morning, doesn't she?" Daphne noted, sipping the last of her bubbly. She handed the empty flute to Matt expectantly.

"_You_ do realize it's eight-thirty in the morning?"

"With my metabolism, you realize the longest I've ever been drunk is eleven minutes?"

"Everyone remembers their wedding day," Matt teased.

Barbara and Mohinder laughed. Barbara then gasped and grabbed hold of Mohinder as she almost stumbled down. In the blink of an eye, Daphne retrieved a chair and helped Barbara into it. Mohinder knelt down with great concern. "Barbara…"

"Something is not right with my hip joint," Barbara seethed.

"Artificial cartilage?" Mohinder offered.

"Probably," Barbara spat, "just have them look into it when they replace my knee. Just one of the problems with being a cyborg, I suppose."

"_Priya_, you're not a cyborg."

"I appreciate that, _Mausi_," she replied.

Matt offered, "He's right, you know. You're not cyborg unless you have computerized hardware." This earned him a smack on the forearm from his wife.

Across the room, Claire was reacquainting herself with an old friend. Zach, after a tight hug, asked her, "You finally back from your 'extended vacation'?"

"Raising an empath is no vacation. Are the rumors true? Are you an agent now?"

"Three months next week. I'm working with Johanssen."

Piper sidled up, wrapping her rubbery arm around Zach's neck twice, "Hey, this your old girlfriend?" Claire and Zach's mouth sat open for half a second before she continued, barely pausing between words, "Yeah, just kidding. Anyway, I got done with my two years of Army work before I came back and got my red badge of courage." She slipped off her jacket, unbuttoned two buttons on her dress shirt, and pulled down the collar to show off a red adhesive bandage on her arm. "Anyway, now that I'm limbered up again, and through that slave labor camp Parkman calls agent training, I am a loyal minion of the Company."

"You got the shot months ago. The injection site should have long since healed," Zach noted.

"Oh, it did, but us one-of-them's like to show pride in our status. Some get the helix tattooed but this is cheaper."

"Congrats," Claire applauded.

Peter then approached, explained that she was being beckoned, and dragged a confused Claire away.

They were intercepted a few feet away when Claire was suddenly enveloped in a surprise hug by her biological mother. "Oh, Baby, I've missed you." Meredith then gave the same friendly treatment to Peter.

"So, where's my…" Meredith paused to muddle on this, "Where's Hannah?"

"With Trisha," Peter responded, "we wanted to let her get to know her cousin Noah."

"She's got her work cut out for her." Meredith then brought up, "So, as I hear it, you two are ready to return to the Company full-time?"

Peter remarked, "We feel confident that Hannah has control of her abilities."

"Well, the first place we're going to station you is in Barstow." Meredith dug through a shoulder bag and handed them a yellow file.

Claire opened it, "Peter, Claire, and Hannah Bulter… Meredith, we're not…"

"Of course not. Read on: 30-year-old widowed father of a three-year-old girl and his 22-year-old half-sister, about to start medical school."

"Why does this street name sound familiar?" Claire mused.

She was answered with a painful but minor electric shock to the back of the head. Elle then greeted her with, "Hey, Pom-Pom. Guess who's gonna be neighbors!" She wrapped her arms around Claire's neck in a one-sided hug.

"Mom, seriously," Claire begged. Meredith made a valiant attempt to show sympathy.

"You want your dog back?" Elle asked out of the blue, "'Cause you can't have him. Noah loves him too much."

"Wait, are you talking about Mr. Muggles?" Claire replied, flabbergasted, "W-w-what about the Costa Verde Disaster?"

"Oh, you wanna know why he wasn't vaporized, don'cha? Oh, he got doggie cancer in like 2009, so I injected him with some regen blood."

"And that worked?" Claire replied, looking green.

"No, it actually gave him 'acute blood poisoning'. Because it was human blood. Who knew?"

"I did," Gabriel remarked darkly, placing his arms around his wife's shoulders.

"Know-it-all," Elle teased, "When I said Noah was attached to the mutt, I actually meant Bob Barker here. So sad about losing his 'Little Fluffy.' Anyway, he was like an hour from death anyway, so I tried injecting him with an Evolution shot."

"And?" Claire asked, against her better judgment.

"He exploded." She made a popping noise with her lips.

"Mr. Muggles… exploded?"

"Into teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy doggie bits." She make an exploding firework gesture and brought her hands back together, "Then all the little doggie bits just came back together. Except for the tumor."

"That's disturbing."

"He does the same thing every time he gets hit by a car. Or, you know, thrown into the next county a nuclear explosion."

"'Every time'?" Claire was poised to ask the obvious question, but instead concluded, "Why do I even start conversations with you?"

Elle noted gleefully, "Anywhere, we're off to set something on fire."

In a pure deadpan, Gabriel explained seriously, "We're very mad that Bess chose to have strawberry cake at this shindig."

Claire turned to her mother and asked, "Is it too soon to ask for a transfer?"

Meredith asked, "Funny, I thought you and Gabriel had buried the hatchet."

: : :

Claire Bennet  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
9/22/2011

Claire, with a tube sucking blood out of her arm, was looking forlornly at the empty box of Oatmeal Crème Pies. She had pledged voluntary conscription to the Company not three days ago, and so far the work had been dull.

The door opened and Claire's second favorite uncle walked in.

"Sy—Gabriel, sorry," she greeted awkwardly.

Gabriel knocked and entered the room. "It's okay. Is Pete here?"

"No, he's off. Have you tried his room?"

"No, I, uh, was hoping to talk to you, actually."

"Suit yourself. Though, you're gonna have to open that cabinet and get me something to eat."

"Hunger pangs. I can relate." He tossed her a box of Nutty Bars. "And I mean, _actual_ hunger, not… you know."

"I got it," Claire graciously cut him off while ripping open a package and gnawing on the snack bar.

"I need a favor," Gabriel asked. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and pulled down his collar, exposing the scratches marring his neck.

Claire's voice immediately filled with concern, "Why didn't you heal? I seem to recall a certain having my head ripped open." She paused and apologized, "Sorry, still working through the anger issues. Again, why don't you have my power anymore?"

"The Antidote wiped me clean. Peter reinjected me, but all that came back immediately was intuitive aptitude and telekinesis." He demonstrated by lifting a snack bar out of Claire's box and bringing it to him. "But I haven't been able to get yours back. I've run through that night in my head a dozen times and I've got enough sympathy to weight down an ocean liner but… no regeneration."

"What do you need me for? Is being around me going to make it easier?"

"Well, I've decided to cheat. I had Matt mind-whammy me again, so I've once again picked up telepathy. I was hoping you'd give me permission to… explore you."

"Well, when you put it in _those_ terms… Look, we've all got a lot to atone for. Explore away."

Gabriel pressed his thumbs firmly against Claire's cheekbones and wrapped his fingers around to the base of her skull and brought his forehead within half an inch of hers and began to concentrate. Claire scrunched her face as her mind was invaded.

The cuts on Gabriel's neck began to close.

: : :

Liam Samuels  
Freedom Tower  
Washington, D.C.  
November 9, 2016

The large room was quiet. Decorations still hung from every corner and the ultra-thin television sets on the walls still displayed election coverage, though the sound was muted. President Liam Samuels sat on the stage as the clocks reported that it was nearing 2:30 in the morning.

He was still sitting pensively when an attractive woman of forty entered the room, wearing a white-trimmed peach-colored suit that contrasted with her olive skin and mahogany-brown hair. She took a seat beside Liam and began to stroke his grey-streaked black hair.

"Hey, Sweetie," Liam whispered.

"Are you still brooding in here?"

"I'm not brooding," he insisted. "You remember how excited I was to do this eighteen months ago?" he asked sarcastically. Dahlia grinned. He continued, "Rick just started spouting statistics, using all these politician techniques that _I taught him_… And then I led by four points until the very end. I got caught up in the hype. I'm not sad I lost. I'm relieved, in fact."

"I knew you would be," she answered softly. In a cheerful tone, she pointed out, "Not many people can say they served for four years as President without being elected. What are you going to do now?"

"I think it's about time we visited Greece like you've always wanted."

"So you're just out of the game?"

"Oh, we both know how this is going to play out. After two or three months on the Greek coast, I'll get antsy, and you'll tell me it's time to go home and get back to work. I'll claim I'm tired of the limelight and ready to get back to my roots. I'll start by consulting for various aspiring Congressman for the New York State House. But, fifty-to-one odds, in three years, I'll be the very front-and-center campaign manager for Nancy's Presidential bid. Lord knows I can't resist the challenge of making a divorced, black, Republican woman President."

"And I'll be there every step of the way," Dahlia soothed.

Liam continued unhindered, "It won't be too hard. She had fantastic approval ratings as VP. There were times when her approval rating was like twice mine."

Dahlia kissed Liam's cheek.

"I just lost a Presidential election by a landslide. I think we need to celebrate." Liam pulled his wife up by the hand and left the room, turning off the light, and plunging the room into darkness, with a smile on his face.

: : :

Primatech Office Supplies  
New Orleans, Louisiana  
August 4, 2021

Monica Dawson was still beautiful at thirty-four. In front of the all-acrylic glass office building, she waited patiently in the Louisiana summer heat, fluttering the thin white blouse she wore under her cream-colored jacket-dress. In her hands, she held a thin, notebook-sized piece of hard plastic.

Peter, Claire, and 8-year-old Hannah teleported in before her. Peter and Claire hadn't aged since Monica had last met up with them. She greeted them warmly, "Welcome to New Orleans."

"Thanks!" Claire cheered, already sweating in her merlot-and-rose waistcoat suit. She immediately regretted her dark colors; she also began to consider a shorter hairstyle. "I figured you be running this place by now."

"Just as soon as Carlson keels over."

Monica handed Peter the plastic sheet. "It's blank," he remarked about the sheet as he shook it.

Monica took the sheet back and slapped it against the glass wall of the antechamber as the foursome passed through the automatic doors. The sheet turned an opaque white and writing appeared. "New tech, so unreliable. You're gonna have to start selling this stuff. Don't worry, the demo supply works better."

"We're the Bishops," Peter announced.

"Seriously?" Claire whined.

Monica explained, "Look, 'Bishop' is a very common surname down here. And Mr. Bishop put a lot of years into creating background identities. It made our job very easy for some 'niece' of his and her widowed stepbrother to have a transfer here from California. By the way, you two are being promoted. Congratulations, you're reserve agents."

"I thought you needed more personnel in your medical department."

"You _are_ the medical department. We've been running at below-70 percent capacity for nearly a decade. Whatever you guys did at Barstow to get into the black, Strauss wants you to do here."

"What will we be working on?" Peter asked.

"What else? The disappearances. We've had eleven since the beginning of the year already. Welcome to the team."

: : :

Primatech Solutions, Inc.  
Midland, Texas  
March 30, 2025

"Welcome to the team," Meredith cheerfully welcomed her daughter, Peter, and twelve-hear-old Hannah. "Sweetie, you look lovely."

"So do you," Claire remarked sincerely. Though her mother was now in her mid-fifties, she looked a decade younger, due to a rigorous program of hair coloring and skin care.

"Auntie Mere!" Hannah excitedly hugged Meredith.

"Lord in Heaven," Meredith beamed, "if you aren't the most beautiful young lady I ever did lay eyes on."

Peter took his daughter's hand and noted, "Meredith, congratulations on the promotion."

"This facility is my baby. Open six months. Fifteen years with the Company, every job from rookie agent to director, this is what I hope the future of this place is. Making a world safe for all."

"You should make that the mission statement."

"Part of it is," Meredith pointed behind Peter and Claire, where the mission statement proudly stood.

Claire giggled, "And here I thought you'd gone philosophical."

"Your mom, no. I'm still a Texan at heart. So, you ready to get started?"

Claire and Peter readily agreed, but the moment was cut short when they saw Hannah staring at a wall across the lobby. After exchanging glances, they walked over toward where Hannah was standing.

Dozens of framed photographs lined the wall. Above the rows of pictures was the caption: "In Memory of Those Lost in the Odessa Disaster: December 22, 2012."

"Odessa," Hannah remarked, not looking up, "It's the town that used to be near here."

Claire paused, wondering if Hannah was talking to her and Peter. She replied, "Yeah. I grew up there. It's still there; the government will reopen it once they're sure the radiation levels are low enough."

Hannah's eyes descended to the top two photographs. The first was of Nathan Petrelli; the second was of the Haitian, labeled "René Bokor" in quotes. The rest were position below these.

"It happened on my birthday."

"You knew that, Hannah," Peter remarked.

"I'm twelve now. I know it's not a coincidence. What does the disaster have to do with me? And which one's Mom?" Hannah looked up expectantly.

Peter looked to Claire, who nodded. He knelt down behind his daughter, who resolutely avoided her father's eyes by staring straight ahead. "Your mom's picture isn't up there. But as for your other question… we're both mimics, and a while back, before you were born, I knew this man by the name of Ted Sprague…"

Across the room, Meredith watched as Peter spoke to his daughter while Claire stood several feet back, watching the two with a heartbroken look on her face.

: : :

Micah Sanders and Molly Walker  
Primatech Solutions Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 20, 2029

Micah and Molly, now in their early thirties, stood before the Restricted Area of Primatech. Molly was waiting patiently, reading over a dossier on e-paper. Micah simply stood with his hand held out, holding a touch phone, his pose relaxed but with a concentrating look on his face.

Molly looked over, surveying him. "Micah, are you _working_?"

Slipping the phone in his pocket, he noted sheepishly, "We _are_ at work."

"We're on welcome duty for Peter and Claire. It's a big honor."

"I know. And I do like Peter and Claire, and I do look forward to working with them. But, we've been waiting for ten minutes. I thought the guy could teleport."

"Not all of our brains are connected to the atomic clock." Molly noticed Micah wasn't responding, so she turned her head again, noticing Micah's hand was in his pocket. "Why do you even _have_ an office? I hope your finishing some reports."

Micah noted while staring into space, "Peter and Claire appeared at the front desk three minutes ago. And their badges just registered at Elevator B getting off at the third floor, so I'm estimating… seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

At that very moment, the trio of Peter, Claire, and a bouncing sixteen-year-old Hannah, turned around the corner. After rolling her eyes, Molly put on a smiling face and prepared to welcome her newest colleagues.

: : :

A/N: You know, I really ought to be more squicked out by the Petrellicestiness. I mean, I've got Peter and Claire acting like new parents. Now, I've got Gabriel doing a Vulcan mind meld with Claire, which is hilarious on multiple levels.

I really didn't want to highlight this, because it would have made a better background detail, but I'm trying to show evolving fashions and technologies as we take multi-year leaps in time. However, since this is not a visual medium, I fear it may becoming confusing.

Having to rewrite this was a detriment to the Bess's Coronation Reception scene, where I had a beautiful conversation between Mohinder, Barbara, Matt, and Daphne that I was unable to recreate fully. On the other hand, the loss of content allowed me to put a bookend on Liam Samuel's story. I wanted to include a long governmental subplot, but I've had to scrap most of the idea because it kept getting too muddled. This does allow me to get to 2029 quicker, which is really the point of this series.

Started 6/10/2009. Finished 12/2/2009.


	5. Welcome Home

Progeny, Chapter 5  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summary: Peter and Claire move to New York to join the Hartsdale branch, and find out that their stay is going to be very eventful. Savannah also returns to New York; excitement will not be a stranger to her, either.  
Spoilers: Vaguely Season 3. If you missed the spoiler notice from the previous chapter, this is a sequel to "The World Entire," and as such will spoil much of it.

A/N: I wanted to take this moment to wish **Cat Yuy** a happy birthday. I'm dedicating this chapter to her for her loyal reading and consistent reviewing; I hope she finds it satisfactory. It's belated because I just couldn't get this out yesterday.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_: Peter, Claire, and Hannah rejoin the Company, watching as Directors come and go, traveling from branch to branch. President Liam Samuels loses the race and doesn't regret it.

: : :

Chapter 5: Welcome Home

_By studying animals in the wild, we can learn a lot about ourselves. Note how wolf packs and primate troops usually consists of only related members, yet it is far from uncommon for unrelated individuals to be allowed to join the group. These tenderfoots must learn the rules, not the least of all, the pecking order. Though the hierarchy is dynamic, they must always know who the alpha male is. These skills teach us how to function in the world, in our workplaces and in our families. It is our differences that allow us to live in harmony, though these same differences also lead to strife. What is the meaning of this contradictory dichotomy? That only harkens to questions as old as time. _

: : :

Peter, Claire, and Hannah  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
3/20/2029

Once together, Micah and Molly led Peter, Claire, and Hannah through the Restricted Area doors. The hallways behind the doors looked no different than those before them.

"There's the main command center where everything gets done," Micah noted, pointing into an office with a large glass desk and an entire wall covered with an acrylic computer monitor. The name plate beside the door stated, "Micah Sanders, Technology Department Head."

"So, you've moved to management," Peter asked playfully.

"Yes," Molly replied teasingly, "he's in charge of exactly zero employees."

"I _am_ the Technology Department," Micah explained. He guided the trio into the office while Molly waited outside, tapping her foot.

Micah touched the wall-sized screen and immediately three white boxes appeared over the turbulent gray background. They were wiki-style dossiers, filled with images and blue info-boxes. The subjects of these dossiers were of the three guests in Micah's office.

"I have access to every database in the world. Typically, this would create an issue with data compatibility, but the human mind is particularly adept at that task," Micah began to monologue, "allowing me to synthesize…"

Hannah simply passed by him, allowing her father and Claire to listen. She took an interest in her own biographical chart. She scanned a number of photos of herself at various ages, including one from her at only a few weeks of age. Tapping it, the image popped out, desaturating the rest of her biography and listing the metadata of the image, including the time and location of its taking. She exited out of this and then tapped her birthday and was presented with screenshots of all majors newspapers, all of which reported the Odessa Disaster in their headline. She tossed away the set and her dossier returned. She scrolled down the dossier and saw a list of links to various government documents: birth certificate, passport, school files, medical records, and so on. She tapped her birth certificate, which soon filled her third of the screen. She saw her father's name but the line where her mother's name ought to be was blank. She checked behind her and saw that Micah was still bragging on his computer system or his technical skills or something, so Hannah started to look through her medical records. She pushed away the records in reverse chronological orders, ignoring the pediatric checkups. There were of course no emergency injury reports. She finally reached the last page, which was the report for her birth. She immediately noticed the disclaimer on the top of the page noting that the report was a recreation from backup files. The report of Adrianna Fillman, OB/GYN stated that she was performing a typical vaginal birth for a Maria C. Rossi.

"What're you looking at, Sweetheart?" Peter asked.

Hannah closed the document and covered, "Just playing. I found the record for that one time I got mono in seventh grade and was cured by the time I got to the nurse's office."

From outside the door, Molly's aggravated voice came, "Micah, if you're quite done, I'd like to finish the tour." All four occupants came to the door, but Molly redirected Micah back into the office, "Redhouse wants your updated profile map."

"Yes, Mom," Micah noted, returning to his cave.

"Well, now that _that_ little side trip is over, I'd like you to meet some of your coworkers."

The first person they encountered was a tall man in his early twenties with sandy blond hair wearing a charcoal gray slacks and a white dress shirt. Peter was quick to embrace him. "Noah, how are you?"

Noah gave a sincere but small smile, responding calmly, "I'm good, Uncle Peter. It's good to have you here."

He turned to Claire and offered another smile, "Claire." They too hugged tightly, exchanging cheek-kisses.

He finally turned to Hannah, towering over her. He clasped her face in his hands and noted, "Oh, you're getting to be so pretty, Cuz. I bet you're a heartbreaker, aren't you?"

Hannah smiled broadly, "Eh, just one heart. Had to leave a boy in Texas." Appraising her cousin, she added, "And you're one to talk."

"I keep myself busy really. See you around," Noah concluded, "I've got an assignment to attend to." He nodded to Molly, who reminded him to put his tie and jacket on before going out. He started to walk down the hall but stopped short. Walking down the hallway toward him, or rather bouncing along, was a cute, brunette girl in her late teens, wearing a rose-colored, lacy blouse over a patterned, baby blue, full-length skirt.

"Noah!" the girl screeched with childlike enthusiasm, wrapping her arms around Noah's neck in a tight hug, laying a wet kiss on his cheek.

Blushing, Noah replied, "Hey, Dani."

Claire, observing from afar, asked Molly, "Oh, is that Noah's girlfriend?"

"Nope," Molly remarked with buried displeasure.

The brunette skipped the rest of the way to Molly, leaving Noah where he stood. Her purple bead necklace swung around her neck, as did her silver crescent moon earrings. Her carmine red headband did little to stay her mussed hair. She wrapped her arms around Molly, giving her a noisy kiss on the cheek, and rested her head on Molly's shoulder, looking at Peter, Claire, and Hannah with a gleaming grin on her face.

"Guys, you remember my little sister Daniella?" She turned her head to her sister, whose face was an inch from her own, "Dani, you remember Peter Petrelli and Claire Bennet?"

Dani turned her head back to the group and leapt from Molly into an embrace with Peter and Claire, wrapping an arm around each of their necks, and laying a European kiss against each of their cheeks. "Hi. It's so good to see you again." She left a stunned Peter and Claire to amble over to Hannah. "Is this the baby one?"

"I'm sixteen," Hannah protested before being tightly hugged by Daniella, who pulled away just far enough to press their foreheads together. "I remember when you were an itty-bitty baby. You still so _cute_," she remarked. She jerked her head to the left, looking down the adjacent hallway, and exclaimed to no one in particular but herself, "Hey, it's Andrew!"

She ran over to Molly, proudly declaring, "I love you," in a syrupy, almost baby-talk voice. She impatiently waited the two seconds it took for Molly to maternally return the sentiment before racing off in a not-quite-straight direction.

Neither Peter nor Claire was quite able to voice their question. Molly, however, seemed prepared for the inquiry. "You guys haven't spent any time around Daniella since she was old enough for this kind of behavior to register. Daniella came into her abilities as a baby. She is an empathic telepath. She knows every thought and feeling of every person she has ever come into contact with. For her… Well, imagine your best friend, someone with whom you have shared everything: your past, your nightmares, your dreams, your fantasies. If Daniella has been in your presence for more than a few seconds, that's who you are to her. And since she doesn't know how to turn it off, everyone's that to her. And she's lucky that she the type of person who can handle it."

They let this explanation sink in and Claire asked, "So, what Dani do here?"

"She's in HR, or whatever qualifies at it. She's kind of like a counselor. In addition to absorbing feelings, she can also push. For our agents, who have stressful jobs, she's comfort them. No matter what horrors they face, no matter how much anger they accumulate, just being with Daniella helps them process it because _she_ can process it." Molly continued proudly, "Also, we loan her out to the FBI. The girl can make warlords weep and fill serial killers with overwhelming guilt. And confessions just come."

"I think she wanted to make out with me," Hannah remarked conjecturally.

Peter and Claire tried to reprimand her, but Molly cut them off, "Daniella has boundary issues. I said everyone is like a close friend to her, but they might as well be a lover. She has trouble differentiating between the types of love, so you could say she loves everybody."

"Everybody?" Peter asked.

Molly remarked offhandedly, "She doesn't care for Bess."

After a moment, Molly pointed down the hall, where Daniella was casually chatting with a dark-haired young man around her age. "The result is that she unintentionally strings along a dozen of my agents, including…"

"Peter, isn't that…?" Claire pointed out.

"Yes, that would be my nephew Andrew." Andrew Petrelli was tall youth with a full head of neatly-combed black hair, wearing a well-pressed, tailored, navy blue suit.

"Dani," Molly called, "aren't you on-duty?"

"I checked the board," Daniella replied, "There wasn't anybody on it."

"Dani, you're on-call. I hope you have your phone with you."

Dani paused thoughtfully before digging into her skirt pocket and fishing out a small bar mobile phone covered in a tie-dye gel cover. She gave Molly a thumbs-up gesture and walked away.

Molly led the trio to her office. It wasn't a large office; it was just big enough to hold a standard faux-wood desk, a bookcase in the back, a couple of chairs in front of the desk, and a loveseat squeezed on the opposite side with a skinny end table and metal lamp. The far wall featured a large-screen slim monitor displaying a chart of the statuses and locations of various agents with a sidebar streaming news headline and progress report summaries. Molly sat down in her desk chair, and Peter and Claire took the two seats in front of the desk, leaving Hannah more than content with the loveseat.

Molly handed Peter an e-folder, which she noted, "Hand that to Hannah. It's all your biographical information. While you're here, you'll be using the cover name Strauss. You'll be housed at one of our Company-owned condos: three-bed, two-bath, fully furnished. I though Hannah might like to check it out while I debrief you two."

Hannah protested, "Dad, you said I could be an agent."

Peter chuckled, "Hannah, I told you, if you graduated early, I'd let you work at the Company. I never said you could be an agent, and they won't let you anyway."

"You have to be eighteen," Molly explained, "But there's plenty for you to do here. And not just grunt work and clerical stuff. You can work in the firearm cage. You can do prisoner rounds. And," she enticed, "since you're a regenerator, you're automatically cleared for Level 2. And since you're sixteen, you can start training."

Molly's words cheered Hannah immensely and she happily took the dossier and left. When the room was quiet again, Peter asked, "So, there's got to be a reason why you were able to move us to New York in a month when the process usually takes six."

Molly pulled a flash drive on a lanyard from underneath her shirt. She held it up the wall monitor and typed in a code when a window popped up with a padlock icon. Four red folders appeared on screen under the title "Project L6." Each folder was labeled "Top Secret."

"'L6'" Peter read, "I don't understand the reference."

"What I'm about to tell you is highly classified. Not many people know about this: the President, the VP, a few other world leaders. The Directors of NI, CIA, and FBI, and their respective task force leads. My dad, and Redhouse, and me. The other Regional Directors do not. This is why we spent millions getting the other branches up to snuff only to suddenly reduce them to shoestring budget and staff a month ago. It's because of this: L6; it stands for Level 6."

"Level 6 _prisoners_?" Claire asked.

"There's a super secret Level 6 now?" Peter pointed out, smirking.

Molly replied with grave severity, "We created it a month ago. As you know, the Level system is not arbitrary. Level 5 was definitively for the most dangerous criminals: lethal ability with antisocial tendencies." She tapped the four folders, which opened to show four assignment tracker profiles. "These four used to be high-risk Level 5 targets under Hartsdale's jurisdiction. Thirty-two days ago, we sent out a team to recon one of them, and if possible, bag-and-tag him. The report we got back told us something terrible… something that meant we needed a sixth level."

: : :

Savannah Lemay  
Deveaux Apartment Complex  
New York City, New York  
3/20/2029

In the vestibule outside the lobby of the apartment complex, Savannah mashed the power button of her touch-screen phone to no avail; the device refused to turn on. "I charged you!" she screamed at the phone.

"Can I give you a hand?" a lean, bespectacled young man asked.

Savannah handed her phone to the man. "Tommy?"

"I go by 'Matthew' now," he answered, tapping the screen, causing the phone to light up.

Savannah took back her phone, "Cool trick. So, 'Matthew'?"

Matthew nodded, "Yeah, Tom McHenry is a good man. And he raised me. But he tried to pretend I was his biological son despite all evidence to the contrary…" To demonstrate, he made the vestibule lighting turn on and off with a series of snaps. "Truth is; I'm Matt Parkman's son."

"So that's why you're in New York now, to reconnect with him?"

"That's correct. And my two sisters. Speaking of which, I'm supposed to meet up with Daniella. Is she inside?"

"I don't know. I haven't been in. And, if she's changed as much as you have, I'm not sure I'd recognize her."

"Okay, I guess I'll check."

Matthew continued to hover, so Savannah explained, "I've got to call my mom. She's a worrier. Listen, I'll be at Hartsdale for a while, so, I'll see you around, okay?"

"Great!" Matthew replied awkwardly, taking the opportunity to enter the lobby.

Now having privacy, Savannah called a number and video-chatted with her mother on her phone.

"Did you get to New York okay?" Meredith asked. Savannah noticed her mother's Primatech Office in the background, meaning she was working late again.

"Yes, Mama, I got here just fine. I've done it before. Lots of times." Savannah pulled off her heavy wool coat on sleeve at a time so that she could continue talking with her mother.

"Okay, Sweetie. Tell your Daddy 'Hi' for me, Savannah Rose."

"Just Savannah, Mom," Savannah pleaded, shaking out her blonde hair, "It's a Southern enough name as it is."

"You got a problem with the South?"

"No, Mama," Savannah replied, slipping into a Texan accent, "you know I love Texas just as much as New York. There's no reason for the two of them to fight over me."

"Oh, well, watch out for your sister. Make her feel welcome."

"I will. Bye, Mama. I love you."

"I love you too, Darlin'."

Savannah made her way into the stylish lobby. She didn't see her father, but she did catch the eye of Daniella Parkman talking with Matthew. Savannah smiled and waved, but Daniella made a beeline for Savannah, not offering a word until the blonde girl was enveloped in a hug.

"Hello, Daniella," Savannah commented, "Oh, we love hugs, don't we?"

"Savannah Rose," Daniella greeted, her arms still wrapped around the girl, pulled back to ask dreamily, "How long will you be in town?"

"A while. I'm going to start summer classes at Columbia and I came early to get ready with my dad."

"So, will you be living _here_?"

"For a couple of months, yes. I'll move into the dorms this May. Do you live here?"

"Oh, yes. On the very top floor."

"The penthouse?"

"Daddy's Director."

Savannah nodded knowingly. "Yes, I recall those perks."

"Would you like to have a sleepover?" Daniella asked excitedly.

"Not tonight," the 19-year-old Savannah replied to the 18-year-old Daniella. Seeing the ever-emotional girl frown sadly, she appended generously, "Let me settle in. We'll do it next week."

Daniella smiled gleefully, noting, "That's okay. Mr. and Mrs. Suresh are having dinner with us tonight anyway," before bouncing off to places unknown, passing by Savannah's father on the way. Matthew raced after her with a wave to Savannah.

"Hey, Princess," Howard remarked.

Savannah hurried over and hugged him. "I missed you, Dad."

"C'mon up, your old man's making spaghetti."

"Cooking?"

"I can do spaghetti," Howard defended, "it's gonna be a long time before we have to order takeout. Could be as late as this Friday."

"Great," Savannah remarked as they loaded the elevator. Studying the keypad, she noticed a notice for the top floor. "I forgot; there's roof access."

"Yeah," Howard replied, "but you have to get a key from one of the Parkmans."

"I think I'll give Daniella a call." After meeting eyes with her father, she added, "After dinner."

: : :

Mohinder and Barbara  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
10/10/2012

Sweat beaded on Barbara Zimmerman's forehead as she held herself up on the parallel bars and struggled to put her left foot in front of the right. She relaxed her arms slightly, putting weight on her legs. It proved to be too much strain and she collapsed to the floor screaming.

From the adjacent room, Mohinder heard the sound and raced in, finding Barbara struggling on the floor, cursing up a storm in German.

"Miss Zimmerman, what happened?" He knelt down.

"I tried to walk," she replied edgily as she untangled her legs.

"I take it that didn't work so well."

"You think? Can I get a hand?" she asked, extending her arm.

Mohinder took her hand and dragged her out from under the assistance bars. Once she was out, he examined her legs.

"Don't look at them," she pleaded self-consciously, wishing she weren't wearing short athletic shorts.

"I'm just checking to make sure there're no broken bones."

"I know what you're doing, Doc; I just don't want you looking at my legs. They're ugly."

"They look fine to me." Mohinder grabbed Barbara around the midsection and lifted her into her wheelchair.

"No, they don't," Barbara contested morosely, "They're the skinny legs of a ten-year-old _wildfang_."

"Vild fong?"

"'Tomboy' roughly," she translated.

"Yes, I heard you cursing the heavens in German. What were you saying?"

Barbara began to wheel herself toward the door, which Mohinder helpfully opened. "Mostly cursing of the heavens, yes, but the last part was really just nonsense about dancing bears and clowns drinking beer. Nice thing about German; no matter what you say, it sounds like swearing a sailor into a blush." Barbara grinned.

"You're lucky. Swearing in Hindi sounds like a children's playground rhyme."

Barbara laughed at that. She rubbed her legs. "You know how this happened?" Without waiting for a response, she answered, "I fell seven stories after being thrown through a plate glass window. Anyway, I'm lying in some hedges, broken like a china doll, so I call Angela, the _enemy_. She didn't trust me as far as she could throw me—which is a good instinct, honestly—so she gave me Synthetic blood instead of Natural." She traced the white marks that marred her face and neck.

"You're still beautiful."

"Please."

"Remember what I used to look like?"

"Well, thanks for the comparison," she replied bitingly.

"I'm sorry, Miss Zimmerman, I didn't mean…"

"It's okay, Doc, I know what you meant. And, look, you're gonna have to stop calling me 'Miss Zimmerman.' That's what Arthur called me and I'm not eager to remember him. I was blessed with a very nice first name."

"Alright, Barbara," Mohinder tried it out, "feel free to call me Mohinder then."

"Sounds like a deal." Enjoying the moment, Mohinder offered, "I could use a frozen yogurt. Would you like to join me to the cafeteria?"

After a brief moment of consideration, Barbara replied honestly, "I'd be delighted."

The happily chatting pair passed by the medical lab. Both were too absorbed in their conversation to see the two figures inside.

"So, how's Claire?" Gabriel asked his brother.

"She's doing well under the circumstances. Eating a lot more," Peter commented, closing the fridge which stored dozens of plastic bags filled with Claire's blood. "How are Elle and Noah?"

"They're good. Elle wants to put Noah in normal day care, which we know we can't do because of his abilities. I think Elle just wants to live vicariously through him; you know, make up for all the experiences she didn't get being locked up all her life."

"That's good to hear." Peter replied, admiring the absurdity of the _normal_ conversation they appeared to be having.

"Pete, I know you didn't have me fly in from California for a social visit. We get plenty of those with all of Nathan's campaign dinners."

Peter held out his hand. It quickly began to spark, but also lit up with flames. Then, the hand glowed white with radioactive energy before a defibrillator was thrown across the room through a window and Gabriel was knocked over with vertigo. "Sorry, that's the problem. I've been absorbing abilities on a pretty regular basis, and they're doing this. I need you to fix this."

"Okay," Gabriel offered, "but I'll have to mind-probe you." With a nod of affirmation from Peter, Gabriel held Peter's head. After several minutes, he pulled his hands away, holding up his index finger to ask for a moment. He explained, "You've opened up… _emotionally_," Gabriel added a teasing tone to the word, before continuing clinically"…ever since the Epidemic. With Claire, with Nathan, with people in general. Your power works by you remembering how people make you feel. All you need is that split second reaction you got when you first met them. Since it's just a moment, you can store a lot of them." Gabriel stopped really talking to Peter, and just continued, enjoying the thought processes, "Except when you were terrorizing Pinehearst, you closed yourself off; you were cold, distant; and that allowed you reliably grab each power. But now," Gabriel hazarded a brief glimpse of Peter, "you're allowing those split second reactions to remind you of people fully, and its triggering other emotions that trigger other powers. Understand?"

"Yes." Peter snapped to get Gabriel, who had since wandered across the room in thought, to return to him. "So, do you know how to fix it?"

Gabriel frowned with disgust at Peter, "Pete, you insult me." He grinned, "You underestimate me. _Of course_ I can fix it," he noted as if Peter were a small, insolent child. Ignoring Peter's heated look and blazing hand, he noted, "You need to purge some abilities. Choose what powers you don't think you need anymore, especially those that you copied from people that you don't come into contact with anymore. You have the Haitian's ability, right? Erase that first second that you met those people for the first time. In doing so, you'll disable the trigger for unnecessary abilities."

Peter nodded, "Will do." With sincere gratitude, he told Gabriel, "You have not only saved me from constant turmoil about my abilities, but you've probably saved a lot of people for injury and maybe death that could result from me not being able to control my powers. Thank you."

Gabriel looked very unimpressed. "That's it? All I get is a thank-you?"

"What do you want?"

"Babysitting."

"Excuse me?"

"Both Elle and Noah have serious cabin fever. They want to go out. Elle, on a date; and Noah… outside, to the park or something. Trisha isn't capable of caring for Noah outside his cell, and you're the only person on the planet who can manage Noah. Plus, it'll be good practice; you'll be a daddy before the end of the year, right?"

"Right."

"Glad you agree. This Friday night. Be there by six-thirty or suffer the wrath of the missus. I don't care to what corner of the world you take Noah, but just take him somewhere."

: : :

Savannah Lemay  
Deveaux Building Rooftop  
New York, New York  
3/20/2029

Savannah, on the rooftop of the Deveaux Building, leaned over the edge on her stomach, letting her feet hover an inch above the concrete, staring at the streets of New York below.

She heard a sudden, brief electrical zap behind her. She immediately pulled herself up and spun around, waves of heat surrounding her hands. The air crackled on contact.

There was another zapping noise and, fifteen feet above, a small flurry of white tendrils of light which disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Seconds later, without warning, there was an explosion of light as a portal opened up.

Two men fell out of the portal. Temporarily blinded, Savannah kept her hands smoldering. The two men who got up were of Japanese origin and in their late twenties. One was tall and thin; the other was shorter, stout, and bespectacled and wore a sheathed sword across his back.

Seeing the warm red glow around Savannah's hands, the shorter man noted, with Japanese-accented English, "You have abilities; I need you to take me to Noah Bennet, or the world is doomed."

: : :

A/N: The scene with Peter, Claire, and Hannah touring the Hartsdale facility was really supposed to be the _introduction_ to this series, but it was fun to spend some time in the years between. These are the characters I'm going to try to develop throughout this series, so pay attention.

I hope I'm not out of line for making this comment, but this chapter reminds me a lot of the _Dollhouse_ episode "Man on the Street." The first few episodes were interesting, but that episode was just… twist after twist. Twists will continue in the next chapter, after which I'll let the storyline play out until it's time to mix everything up again.

I worked really hard to get this chapter out pretty quickly. Chapter 6, however, requires quite a bit of planning and a lot of character design, so sit tight, because it's crucial I get it right, because the rest of the series will be set up in the next chapter.

Started 6/10/2009. Finished 12/10/2009.


	6. The Immovable Object

Progeny, Chapter 6  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summery: Molly Walker tells Peter and Claire about the Sixers. Hiro visits the Company.  
Spoilers: Vaguely Season 3. If you missed the spoiler notice from the previous chapter, this spoils a lot of my other series, "The World Entire."

A/N: It's not worth apologizing about the infrequent chapters anymore. I'm a flawed fanfiction writer just like the rest of us. Just assume I am in a constant state of shame over my lack of punctuality and we'll all get through this together.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… Peter, Claire, and Hannah get a tour of the Hartsdale Headquarters by Micah and Molly, and meet the next generation of the Company. Peter and Claire are informed of Level 6 targets. Savannah moves to New York to live with her father. Back in 2012, Mohinder and Barbara make a connection; and Gabriel reveals his power loss but gets back a power from Claire. Savannah is surprised by a visit from time-displaced Hiro and Ando.

: : :

Chapter 6: The Immovable Object

_The Chinese word for paradox is _máodùn_, or spear-shield. It comes from the third century philosophical book _Han Feizi_, which contains the story of a merchant trying to sell a spear and a shield, claiming the spear could pierce any shield and the shield deflect any spear. His potential buyer asked what would occur should he use the spear on the shield, rendering the seller speechless. He could have very well asked about God creating a rock He could not lift, an immovable object meeting an irresistible force. Science has long since answered the question. The Big Bang released all potential mass and energy (both quantities unimaginably great but by no means infinite) into the universe, and the two are kept in a delicate balance. This balance is defined by the most famous equation of all: E = mc__²__. What a tangled web is weaved. _

: : :

Lemays' Apartment  
Manhattan, New York  
March 20, 2029

"I'm sorry to say that Noah Bennet is dead," Howard explained to the two Japanese men that his 19-year-old daughter brought into their apartment. "And so are you."

Ando peered at the calendar. "Hiro…" He handed Hiro the calendar.

"Oh, we have time traveled. We are from the past."

"I noticed," Howard remarked.

"But if the world is safe, you must know how we defeated Uluru."

"Uluru?" Savannah asked as she brought two mugs of tea for the visitors.

With awe, Hiro narrated, "The Great Invincible Monster. If you worked with Noah Bennet, you must know of the creature that destroyed the office in California."

"The Primatech Regional Office?" Howard asked, "I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. I've been with the Company since '96."

: : :

Mohinder and Mila  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
January 20, 2026

_Three years earlier…_

Mohinder was looking into a microscope when he was greeted with, "Hey, Papi."

"_Beti_," Mohinder greeted, spinning around in his chair and replacing his glasses. Mohinder was now past fifty, his hair graying but still thick, and his eyes weaker but still bright as he gazed upon his daughter. "How is your mother?"

"She's good," Mila remarked. Mohinder's 18-year-old daughter was a beautiful young woman, with coffee-colored skin and long black hair. "How's Barbara?" she asked politely.

"Well," Mohinder remarked, "She's missing the glory days, but she keeps herself busy in Agent Arrangement. If this division keeps growing, she'll have to hire another coordinator. So, what are you in for?"

"Annual checkup."

"How's your ability?"

As an answer, the room was filled with bright ambient light, which faded until total darkness eclipsed the room, before returning to its normal luminosity. Three balls of light appeared in the air before Mila and then each began to shift color independently. The balls of light began to spin quickly, stretching to form a column of iridescent light, which dissipated until the form of Maya Herrera, still in her mid-twenties, appeared. She didn't say anything, just began to pace around the room silently.

"Magnificent," Mohinder remarked, "I've never seen your illusions so life-like."

"Thank, Papi," Mila remarked dismissively, "It's a great parlor trick." The image of Maya disappeared.

"Mila, I'm not saying I _want_ you to put yourself into danger, but having a non-aggressive ability would not stop you from becoming an agent. I've seen agents with much less potent abilities. And you know I think you'd be wasting your talent being a hired gun. Arlington U offered you a full scholarship in music _and_ a teaching fellowship."

"I know. It just seems like I'm wasting my ability by doing something so…"

"Ordinary?"

"You think I'm silly, Papi?"

Mohinder took his daughter's hands in his own. "Mila, nothing good has ever come out of putting a group's label before their personhood. We're not superheroes; we're average people… with a little something extra." He smiled.

"_Gracias._ Show me what you're working on?"

"Flattery will get you nowhere. Don't think your mum hasn't told me that you scraped by Biology with a C-plus." Mohinder's stern gaze faltered almost immediately as he beckoned his daughter over to a microscope as he began to explain his experiment to deaf ears.

: : :

Molly, Peter, and Claire  
Primatech Research Facility  
March 20, 2029

Molly, standing in front of a flat-screen monitor with four open dossiers, explained gravely, "The report we got back told us something terrible… something that meant we needed a sixth level." Molly pointed to the tracker file that she had brought to the foreground. In it, there was a picture of a Middle Eastern man in his late twenties. "Meet Joseph Ghali. Born and raised in Cairo by his Egyptian father, a telecom VP, and French mother, a government translator. He attended a prestigious boarding school in London, and graduated from the University of Lyon with a degree in business. He's fluent in Egyptian Arabic, French, and English."

"He doesn't sound like a Level 6," Peter remarked.

Molly continued as if she hadn't heard the comment, "He came to New York for unknown reasons and we've been tracking him. He's responsible for a number of murders in the area. I sent Covington and Kader to retrieve him from an unemployment office—"

Molly's report was cut off by the door opening and middle-aged woman of Native American descent entering.

"Miss Redhouse," Molly greeted, "Uh… Peter, Claire, you know Sparrow Redhouse, the Hartsdale Director?"

Peter and Claire politely greeted their new boss.

"I was about to debrief them on Covington's report."

"Why don't you show them?" Redhouse suggested austerely.

"I'll need you to declassify it," Molly explained. She tapped the screen and a video player popped up, asking for a pass code. Redhouse held her lanyard up to the screen and the video began to play.

The video recorded Ryan Covington, lying in a hospital bed, from an awkward angle. The lighting was poor, but he still looked ill; he was pale and sweating from fever. He turned to the camera, his voice hoarse and breathy but upbeat, "You know, I should have paid better attention to movies. It's always your last case before retirement which is your _last_ case. I guess I should get to the important stuff." He coughed into his hand and wiped the phlegm on his hand onto his gown. "Leila and I went to apprehend target Joseph Ghali at the 138th Street Office of Unemployment Services. When we arrived, target Joseph Ghali had already infected everyone there with the unidentified disease. Upon making contact, we followed protocol. When verbal warnings were ineffective, we moved to rubber bullets. He remained uncooperative, so we fired warning shots. He displayed no change in demeanor, so I shot him once, in the thigh." Covington turned away from the camera, looking disgusted, "The bullet ricocheted away by some invisible force. Next thing I know, Kader's down with a dozen bullet wounds that… spontaneously appeared. That's when I realized…" Covington paused, looking downtrodden, "…he wasn't alone. God…"

The quiet was interrupted as Covington screamed out in agony, clutching his chest.

"What happened?" Claire asked, distressed.

Molly looked somewhat ill herself as she explained, "It's called Cascading Organ Failure. Ghali produces a very sophisticated virus-like airborne microbe. Once it enters the body, it attacks the body's organs in reverse order of importance. You start out with conditions like appendicitis within moments. Then it starts to slowly necrotize the liver and digestive system after a few hours. After six, the lungs begin to shrivel up. Right before you suffocate, though, you suffer a massive heart attack. If you're not dead eight hours in, you suffer a grand mal seizure which lasts anywhere from three to fifteen minutes. An aneurysm ends you suffering before you recover from the seizure."

"Ryan…"

"Died four weeks ago. We tried to give him blood; it momentarily repaired the damage but accelerated the virus's progress. Kader was DOA from blood loss."

Redhouse jumped in, "I know this is very troubling, but there's something more troubling. Covington stated, 'He wasn't alone.'"

Molly finished, "That's what Level 6 is: cooperative violent aggressors."

Peter noted, "We've had dangerous Specials in groups before. The 2007 Level 5 Breakout…"

"…were unorganized, selfish, and fractured. The Sixers are cohesive, prepared, and deliberate."

"The Sixers?" Peter prompted.

Molly tapped the screen, bringing back all four profiles. "Micah got the video surveillance from the bank. The four perpetrators were not difficult to identify. They were the top four targets on our list. We're calling them the Sixers now. Other names floating around here are the Untouchables and the Four Horsemen."

Molly brought up one profile: a well-groomed white woman in her early forties. "This is Heather Appleby. Otherwise, your typical New England aristocrat. Her ancestors arrived in Maryland from England in the 1600s. She has an ability we're calling magnified deflection. If you try to attack her in any way, she's capable of repelling the attack and reflecting it back tenfold. Apparently, she can extend her ability to protect others, including Ghali. That's what happened to Kader; when Ryan tried to shoot Ghali; Appleby deflected the bullet and riddled her with bullet holes. She's why we called them the Untouchables. We can't get to them because of her."

Claire noted the last two faces. "And the other two?"

Molly pointed to the third profile, of a gruff-looking, grey-haired white man in his sixties. "Gregory Seuss. Born and raised in Canada; he moved to Philadelphia about twelve years ago. Then he moved to the City for, again, no discernable reason. He has the ability to elicit extreme rage in people. The ability does backfire, though; he got the pumpkin beaten out of him by a couple of bouncers at a club in Jersey. Those affected by his ability feed off of each other's rage. So, when he started out, he did nothing but cause a few bar fights, but he's since begun to infect larger crowds, who can't wind down, because of the size, without drug intervention… or killing one another off."

Molly played a few surveillance videos in the background of violent riots at bars, baseball stadiums, and similar venues. Seuss's face was highlighted in a red box.

Peter cleared his throat. Claire sat back in her seat.

Molly pulled up the last profile, of a light-skinned black man in his thirties. "And lastly, Wilson Chow. Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica. His family moved to Southern Florida when he was four. After graduating college, he slowly made his way north taking odd jobs…" Molly tapped the screen, causing geopoints to appear on a U.S. map, each one attached by a line to police reports. "Orlando, Daytona, Jacksonville, Savannah, Atlanta, Charleston, Raleigh, Richmond; he finally settled in D.C. A couple of months ago, he leaves his dishwashing job without notice, and appears in New York, without a dollar to his name. He has the ability of molecular replication. He can transmutate whatever's in his left hand into whatever he's holding in his right hand."

Claire asked, unimpressed, "So what? He's a counterfeiter?"

Molly nodded, "He's been arrested a few times; nothing stuck since he didn't have any evidence of the kind of supplies you'd need to counterfeit money or valuables."

"If he could duplicate _money_ for example, why is he doing odd jobs?"

Molly opened her desk drawer and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill laminated in clear plastic and handed it to Claire. She and Peter quickly noticed the problem: the bill was reversed and all the writing backwards.

"You can only get away with passing one of those once in a while. He's been able pad his checking account by a few hundred dollars, but that's the extent of it."

"Why is this laminated?" Claire asked.

"Low shelf life. It becomes brittle after a few days."

"How is his ability dangerous? Why do we have a counterfeiter, frankly an impotent one classified as a Level 5… akiller?"

Molly turned to the monitor and tapped a link in Chow's profile, bringing up a video player. She fast-forwarded through a low-quality security video and let it play at a certain point. After a few moments, Chow shoved a security guard in the chest. Due to the grainy video, what exactly happened was unclear, though the guard did fall down, unmoving.

"What happened?" Peter asked, squinting at the monitor up close.

"That's what happens if he's not holding anything in his right hand, whatever he's touching turns to a puff of air. That guard's chest is now a giant cavity: no heart, no lungs, no ribs." Molly pulled up an autopsy photo that Peter and Claire diverted their eyes from immediately.

"You said this happened _a month_ ago? Why haven't we stopped this already?" Peter asked with urgency.

"We don't have the resources for it. You saw that construction that's going on in the north lot? We have to build special cages for these animals. We have to plan how we're going to take them out. We don't have many agents who can take them," Molly explained coolly.

"What about me?!" Peter yelled, "I have a dozen powers. And Gabriel? Have you forgotten the swath he cut through the country?"

"_I REMEMBER!_" Molly screamed over Peter, "I remember being nine years old when Sylar slaughtered my parents in my own house while I hid under the stairs _waiting_ to see if I'd survive the day!"

"I'll take it from here," Redhouse calmly noted. "Peter, it's the reason we brought you here. It took us all of 24 hours to decide to move you here. You and Claire are here because you're regenerators. You're the only ones that have a chance of _surviving_ an assault against all four of them, much less succeeding. And, yes, we're bringing in Gabriel, and his son, Noah. But we _could not_ take immediate action. We don't know if, for example, Ghali's death would release a plague that would wipe out millions. If we kill Appleby, how many people die in the deflection? Those are just a few of about a hundred scenarios we're considering. The Sixers have kept a low profile, only attacking small, out-of-the-wall businesses and homes. We're able to suppress the news, but our friends at Counter-Terrorist recognize what these are: training missions. The Sixers are up to something big and we're working as fast as we can to create a plan that will result in the fewest deaths. We're not sitting on our hands. We're just trying not to kill more people than them."

Peter pointed out, "Four random people spread out across thousands of miles don't just move to the same city and start killing people as an organized group out of the blue. Did Micah find any e-connections?"

"Micah isn't privy to all this information," Molly explained, "but, yes, we had him run a few searches in between his assignments. He's found nothing connecting them."

Sparrow added, "You're absolutely right, Peter. These cells don't pop up overnight. I've conference with Counter-Terrorism. One of them brought them all together and is their leader. We don't know who, but when we do, we'll be able cripple them faster by taking out that person."

Claire sat back in her chair and mused, "You know, sometimes it seems like this job does nothing but alert me of coming apocalypses. Is there any hope in the world?"

Fingering the ring on her right hand, Sparrow answered, "Sometimes there's hope."

: : :

Albuquerque, New Mexico  
November 7, 2015

The sun had just begun to rise in the east. Victor Abano, barefoot and wearing a white tuxedo, stood at the top of a hill. Walking up a path was Sparrow Redhouse in a white dress, carrying a bouquet of native flowers and blue corn, also barefoot.

Once Sparrow reached Victor, they joined hands and looked to a minister standing before them. Audrey Hanson and Sparrow's two sisters stood to Sparrow's left. Victor's brother, Ryan Covington, and another Company agent stood to Victor's right. A small congregation of people in folding chairs viewed the ceremony, including Howard and Meredith Lemay in the front row, 3-year-old Savannah asleep on Meredith's shoulder.

After the exchange of rings, the newly married couple led the congregation down the hill into the Los Gallos Church of Christ building. The church's goliath fellowship hall was modestly decorated. Dozens of round tables were fitted with lily white table clothes with Southwestern-flavored centerpieces. The main table stretched from one edge of the stage to the other, to accommodate the sixteen people who were seated there due to some unspoken compromise.

The large buffet line was situated at the back of the church. The front entrance created a gap between the two buffet areas. One half was dedicated to Mexican-inspired cuisine, the other Hopi traditional foods. A towering five-tier cake stood prominently on a separate table, dwarfing a German chocolate cake which was already half-eaten in bits by the children of both the Redhouse and Abano clans. Victor's mother argued in a mix of Spanish and English to the caterer about appropriate braising method for chorizo.

Victor and Sparrow stood together, greeting the seemingly interminable line of distant family members and friends. Both their faces were sore with plastering sincere but obligatory smiles. They'd greeted only about twenty relatives, but already Sparrow's shoulder was burning from the constant hugging and Victor had to flex his bad knee every few minutes from standing.

Hidden behind the folds of Sparrow's dress, the two held each other's hands so tightly that Sparrow's engagement ring and Victor's wedding band created imprints on the palms of each other's palms.

: : :

Hiro, Ando, and Savannah  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 21, 2029

Savannah had to speed up to a jog to keep up with Hiro, who she was supposed to be leading. Ando jogged behind her, with a sympathetic smile.

The threesome reached a small office where Peter and Claire were unpacking items onto a pair of pushed-together desks.

"Peta Patrelli!" Hiro exclaimed.

"Hiro?" Peter remarked.

Savannah, Hiro, and Ando entered the room, leaving little space to move around.

"Peta Patrelli! It is good to see you. I swore you were dead."

"The feeling's mutual," Peter remarked, "I held your dead body in my arms." He paused, wishing he could rephrase that. "That was seventeen years ago. Though time travel would explain why you seem so young."

"You look young, too, Peter," Ando remarked.

"Claire keeps me young. When I'm near her, I don't age. And we're never apart."

"Did I do that to your face?" Hiro asked.

Peter felt along the remnants of the once-prominent scar that crossed his face. There was now only a shallow ridge across his forehead and cheekbone. "Yeah," he confirmed, "It used to be worse. I got plastic surgery in the mid-tens. You don't remember this?"

"Things are different," Hiro remarked, "the _past_ is different. You have not faced Uluru."

"Uluru?"

"Giant rock monster," Savannah explained, "The Invincible One. I looked it up in some old comic book line."

Hiro continued dramatically, "It killed many people and destroyed the Secret Company in California." Hiro noticed a family picture on Peter's desk. "You have not killed Sylar?"

"No, not for lack of trying, but he's good now. Going on twenty years now."

"Oh, like _Terminator 2_."

Claire offered, "He might be able to help us _figure_ this out."

"So might I," Molly remarked, from the door.

Hiro politely bowed. "Hello, Miss, I am Hiro Nakamura."

"I'm well aware of who you are, Mr. Nakamura. Molly Walker," she greeted.

"Little girl?" Hiro smiled, "How _big_ you are now!"

Ando shot an apologetic look to Molly, who nodded appreciatively while smoothing out her blouse and rubbing her hips.

"Anyway, Hiro, I came by because I felt your presence. Hearing the conversation, I thought I might be able to lend a hand."

"You found us?" Ando asked, "I thought you could only _look_ for people."

"My ability has evolved. I can not only find people but sense them. I can see through their eyes, who they're with, what they're feeling. I can sense other things, too."

"Like what?" Hiro asked excitedly.

"You're not from this time. Your soul, it's… outdated. You're from 2009?"

"Yes!"

"But not our 2009. Everything you do leaves an imprint, and your soul has imprints of events that I know never happened. You've jumped the stream."

"That's impossible," Ando noted, "Hiro and I have been time-traveling together for a long time. It's like swimming in a river. You can go upstream or downstream, follow different…" he searched for a word, "…tributaries, if he changes the past, but jumping to a different river? Hiro can't do that."

"Then there's something seriously wrong going on."

: : :

Hannah Petrelli  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 21, 2029

"Something's seriously wrong," Hannah stated. In a small but inviting office, Hannah slouched on a sofa with one leg tossed over the arm.

"Dad and Aunt Claire can resist my telepathy, but their body language gives _everything_ away. At first, I thought it was about my mom. I mean, hello, I'm sixteen and still know _naught_ about my mother. If I hadn't peeked at a file, I wouldn't know her name right now. Maria C. Rossi.

"So, anyways, I've tried Spydering the name. Turns out 'Maria Rossi' is a very common name. I've tried limiting the name to people who'd be at child-bearing age but that's still thousands and thousands. She could be from New York, where Dad's from, or from Texas, where I was born; and honestly, once you go N-Y to T-X, you gotta consider the whole flapping country. Or maybe she's Italian; it is a _very_ Italian name.

"I suppose it could have to do with the fact that my birth set off a couple of nuclear explosions, killed a few thousand people, leveled an entire town. But they don't blame me. I mean, sincerely… telepathy-in-your-head sincerely. I would know; both are total drama queens.

"But, then again, it doesn't feel like mommy issues. It feels like work stuff. They've always, good parents that they are, kept the sketchy details about their jobs from me. But, again, sixteen now. I can handle it. Aunt Claire was fighting off serial killers at my age.

"Not to be all doom-and-gloomy but it could be apocalypse. They've stopped, like, six of them in their lifetimes. Granted, the only ones since I was born were a couple of early averts. But wouldn't the whole place be on red status? Mr. Lemay totally set me up with five-a-week agent training sessions, and you know he wouldn't be wasting the manpower if New York was going to—I don't know—sink into the ocean?"

Hannah looked up, stating venomously, "Okay, Flower Power, you're gonna have to stop gazing at me like that. You're seriously crossing over from fuzzy-wuzzy to bump-and-grind."

Dani Parkman was lying on her back on a rainbow-striped double-large beanbag at the foot of the couch, her head resting up-side-down as she stared dreamily at Hannah. Tucked behind her ears and in her cleavage were a variety of brightly colored styluses which she was using to doodle colorful drawings of cats, airplanes, and other flowery subjects, unseen to Hannah. "Okay," she replied, though not necessarily to Hannah. "You don't feel happy. You should feel happy."

Hannah was at once filled with profound feelings of glee. She smiled and giggled, remarking dryly, "Okay, I could have saved twenty minutes and just downed a box of chocolates laced with X and Cupid."

Relaxing, Hannah was able to manage a scowl and remarked, "Okay, we'll have to do this again sometime. Sitting further apart perhaps. Now, I'm going to go find the shooting range. I need something both phallic and lethal in my hands, STAT. Adios, _rezu_."

Hannah opened the door to Dani's office. Dani, sketching a cake in pink, noted, "That reminds me of a story."

"Go ahead and tell it," Hannah remarked, exiting and closing the door.

"So there was this fisherman…" Dani started.

: : :

Primatech Regional Office  
Front Lobby  
Midland, Texas  
March 22, 2029

The Primatech Offices never slept. During the night hours, there was significant less activity, though. The only employees in the building late at night were the night shift guards and a few scientists trying to catch up on work.

At 4:34 in the morning, the front lobby was empty. When crackles of electricity lit up the waiting area furniture, no one was there to notice. And when a woman fell from six feet up onto a classy leather sofa, she was alone with her thoughts.

The ginger red hair of Charlie Andrews was disheveled as she sat up on the couch. "Hiro, Sweetie, is that you?" she called out anxiously. She looked around the lobby, at the couch she was sitting on, and her own watch. It claimed it was 9:51 PM, which did not match the time projected on the glass walls.

But it was what was on the other side of the wall that grabbed Charlie's attention. "Golly," she remarked, rubbing her distended belly, "I know that complete lack of a landscape anywhere. I'm back in Texas."

: : :

A/N: I've discovered an interesting detail about writing in the future. I designed the Heather Appleby character to be in her late thirties to mid-forties. I chose a common WASPy name for the time… which, since this takes place in 2029, is the 1980s, so she has the name of a young person form today. I also wanted to avoid the cliché of having the old Jewish guy be a Holocaust survivor. Then I realized that in 2029, the Holocaust will be 84 years ago.

Before Sparrow Redhouse was a major character in the Graphic Novels, I got a lot of praise for my portrayal of her. To think, I originally planned to have her die in her original appearance. But she was too plucky. Instead, she gets promotions and a happy marriage.

Started 6/10/2009. Finished 1/22/2010.


	7. The Hard Journey

Progeny, Chapter 7  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summary: Peter and Claire gear up for their mission against the Sixers. Hiro and Ando travel to California to investigate their strange appearance.  
Spoilers: Vaguely Season 3. If you missed the spoiler notice from the previous chapter, this spoils a lot of my other series, "The World Entire."

A/N: I'd like to point out this chapter's contents were not inspired as a reaction to the Volume Five finale. All these storylines were penned well in advance.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… Peter and Claire learn about the Sixers, a group of organized terrorist Specials that the Company is struggling to contain. Howard and Savannah bring in Hiro and Ando, who have jumped the time stream from another past. Back in 2015, Victor and Sparrow exchange their wedding vows. In 2026, Mohinder receives a visit from his teenage daughter Mila. Charlie Andrews pops out of the time stream in her old hometown.

: : :

Chapter 7: The Hard Journey

_The scientific method is the cornerstone of the modern sciences. Sometime in the eighteenth century the radical idea arose that truth could not only be discerned by faith, but also by reason. It was centuries before, that Egyptian scientist Alhazen stated, "Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough." Often, the journey to a goal is long, hard, and rough. To make a real difference requires time, effort, ingenuity, and luck in abundance. And perhaps that is what this world needs. _

: : :

Claire Bennet  
Medical Containment  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 23, 2029

Claire was laying on the floor in a fetal position, wearing a medical gown, her golden blond hair slick with sweat and her skin unnaturally pink. A coughing fit overtook her, forcing a mess of vomit and sputum onto the tile floor. She rolled onto her back, the fluorescent lights blinding her, reflecting off the stark white cement block walls.

A digital thermometer was lying on the ground beside her and she inserted it below her tongue; six seconds later, the readout displayed "104.8/40.4". Her movements jerky, she pressed two fingers against the inside of her wrist, watching the clock projection on the lone window in the room, which acted as a one-way mirror due to the brightness of the room. She counted to 29 in ten seconds. She repeated the action against her neck.

She doubled over, pressing one hand deep into her side near her left hip. She crawled across the floor, kicking over a surgical cart, knocking over a tray of metal instruments. She found her intended tool: a scalpel. Rolling on her back again, she pulled up her gown, guess-measured with her hand, and made a vertical incision against her pelvis that she knew was both too long and too deep. She sat up to get a better view, but the action caused her another coughing fit which she swore included expelling a lung.

Once back on her back, she dug out the scalpel that had become lodged inside her right thigh. Working blindly, she felt around inside her abdomen and finally pulled out her appendix, a wholly unremarkable and unseemly organ. She dropped it like a dead mouse when it began to dissolve before her eyes.

Another round of coughing now included blood, so she grabbed another tool off the ground: a bone saw, which she position high between her breasts, braced herself, and turned on the saw.

: : :

Gabriel Gray  
Primatech Regional Office  
Barstow, California  
March 23, 2029

As Hiro and Ando teleported into the director's office of the Barstow Regional Office, the last person they expected to find was Sylar. Hiro, on instinct, pulled out his sword.

"I am told that you are not evil, Brain Man."

Gabriel sat in his chair with his legs on his rather bare desk. "Seventeen years clean and sober," he remarked, holding up a poker chip ingrained with the numeral "17."

"You have killed no one in seventeen years?"

Gabriel shrugged his shoulders, "Point of clarification. I haven't _murdered_ in seventeen years. I've racked up a few kills as an agent. All self-defense. Scout's honor." He held up three fingers.

"You are in charge here?" Ando asked.

"I am the _Interim_ Regional Director," he remarked snidely, with finger-quotes, "No one is particularly excited about me in a position of authority, reputation preceding and all, but Hartsdale's been hording resources, so I'm actually not in charge of _that_ many people. _And_ the place practically runs itself ever since Hanson's Reich, I mean, reign. _And_, bottom line, my only qualification is seniority. I'm only here until a successor is chosen."

"Who chooses your successor?" Ando asked.

Gabriel's mouth curved in an unmistakably evil grin, "Me. For spite, I'm thinking of putting Elle in charge. Like immediately. Noah and I have been _summoned_ to Hartsdale for some special project that everybody's really hush-hush about. But I'm dragging my feet because I don't feel particularly subservient to Officer Tubbs."

"I thought Tubbs was the black one," Ando whispered to Hiro.

Hiro was not listening, though. "Bennet!" Hiro exclaimed, holding his fingers in circles in front on his glasses to symbolized Noah Bennet's eyewear. With furrowed brow, he put down his hands and noted, "I thought Bennet was dead."

Gabriel's grin faded. "No, not Secret Agent Man. I named by son Noah." Gabriel pulled an electronic picture frame off his desk. He selected a photograph of him, Elle, and a teenage Noah and handed it to the pair.

"This is like Bizarro world," Hiro commented, "I am waiting for bearded Spock."

Ando was staring at the photograph. "You married the electric girl?"

Sylar, rubbing his stubbled chin, answered, "Elle? I'm not saying it wasn't a bit of a shotgun wedding, but we'll be celebrating twenty-two years in July. Why is this interesting?"

Ando and Hiro were unusually quiet. "You had an… affection for Elle in our world, too," Ando answered carefully.

Gabriel read the stoic, almost crestfallen, looks on the Japanese men's faces. He put on a smile to mask his deduction, and asked charitably, "So, I understand you two would like to use my powers of comprehension."

"Yes. We have come here from a different path…"

"And since you require my help, you believe this isn't a normal function of Hiro's time-space manipulation abilities."

"…Yes," Hiro answered flatly.

"Couldn't this be a growth in your normal abilities?"

"No," Hiro answered, "it is not about the extent of my powers, it's about the very natural of time travel."

"Time travel involves moving forward and backwards in time. Changing the past leads to traveling to a new future," Gabriel countered, speaking quickly.

"But no jumping dimensions. I am a DeLorean, not TARDIS."

Gabriel continued at his rapid pace, "I'm not an expert in M-theory. I could be, given the time. I mean, I've already become proficient in quantum particles, combinatorics, and proto-Latin languages, just to name a few. And technically, you've jumped universes, not dimensions. A dimension is just a direction. You've jumped _in_ a direction. Let's say the fifth one for convenience's sake. Tell me what happened."

"We were fighting together against government agents."

"Did they have abilities?" Gabriel interrupted.

"No, they believe abilities are the cause of the monsters."

"Monsters? Wait, unless they were part of the fight, it's not relevant."

"You don't want to hear about the monsters?" Ando asked incredulously.

"I _want_ to, but it's not relevant and would only serve to distract me from identify cause of your alternate universe shift. So, agent had no abilities."

"They had guns that take away your powers."

"In what form? Rays?"

"Darts. They temporarily suppress abilities."

"Not remove, got it. Were either of you hit?"

"No, I freeze time and take away the guns," Hiro noted proudly.

"Ando, do you have abilities?"

"Yes," Ando remarked, coursing red lightning around his hands.

"It's red."

"Yes," Ando answered, "is _that_ relevant?"

"Possibly. My wife's is the typical blue-white you'd expect electricity to be." He paused, "Red would indicate that your electricity were somehow _cooler_ that." This seemed to be infinitely curious to Gabriel.

"I think it's very cool. We were fighting alongside Sparrow Redhouse and she was suddenly able to cause earthquakes. Usually she…"

"…can only move small boulders and create grooves in the earth. I assume you met her at Hartsdale." Gabriel held up a finger and his eyes lit up. "Power augmentation. It's a side effect of your ability. It's a low-amplitude but variable voltage ability, allowing you to both overload a person's nervous system, maiming or killing them _and_ supercharge abilities. I'm hypothesizing that your power came into contact with Hiro, whose abilities were temporarily upgraded from time-space manipulation to include hyper-time manipulation, allowing you to fold hyper-time and perhaps hyper-space, putting you here. Though the probability that you'd end up here—and by here, I just don't mean the U.S.—I mean Earth, I mean this solar system. I mean inside of a three-dimensional universe. Super-augmenting Hiro's power could have left you in a rapidly expanding seven-dimensional space where you would be instantly spaghettified. It's no coincidence. You were brought here by some sort of pseudo-gravitational force."

After a long pause lasting well over thirty seconds, Hiro commented, "I like spaghetti."

The phone rang. Gabriel listened for a moment. "My good sirs, the plot thickens. Meredith Gordon has just informed me that your wife has appeared on this plane, Hiro. I would like to point out that this is the second _infinitesimally_ improbable occurrence to happen in as many days. I do not understand what is happening, but I am _giddy_ to figure it out. Ando, perchance might you squirt a little of your power into me?"

Ando reluctantly conceded, offering a sparking hand. The moment Gabriel touched him, his eyes opened in awe, as if he were viewing Heaven itself.

Ando pulled away. "Did you figure out what happening?"

Gabriel had to brace himself against his desk. Breathily, he answered with deep awe, "I _did_. In fact, I understood the entire form and function of all creation. I was as God." He sighed pitiably. "But my brain is too feeble to maintain that. It was a beautifully humbling experience." He sighed once more, his tone changing to casual, "So, want to teleport to Midland to meet the ball and chain?"

: : :

Peter Petrelli  
Agent Arrangement  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 23, 2029

Peter walked into an office space. It was fairly spacious, about thirty feet square. One corner housed a black-metal and glass desk and another corner had been converted into a small office by modular walls. The opposite side of the room featured a number of tables and half a dozen screens filled with an assortment of tables and graphs.

A mild wave of vertigo dropped Peter to his knees. It quickly faded as Barbara Zimmerman, still attractive in her fifties, exited her makeshift office without greeting him. If it weren't for the thin gap in one of her eyebrows where one of many white scars once lay and her devil-may-care posture, Peter wouldn't be able to tell her apart from Tracy Petrelli.

"Barbara, always nice to see you," Peter remarked less than sincerely.

Without acknowledging the sentiment, she noted, "I see you've had work done." She gestured to her own face.

"I see yours was more successful."

"My scars were minute. You looked like someone tried to cut your head in half."

"Someone _did_."

"Welcome to Agent Arrangement."

"You'll have to give me the full spiel. I've heard a little about it, but Midland hasn't implemented it yet."

"Yeah, we're always the guinea pigs. Barstow added it last year. Agent Arrangement employs Agent Coordinators like myself. We're like concierges. We do all the grunt work that agents are too lazy or too careless to perform well."

"Like what?"

Another voice answered, "Your cover identity, for example." Peter turned to see a young woman standing in the room. She was no more than twenty, thin, blonde, and girl-next-door pretty. "Evie North," mentioned briefly, as means of an introduction. She moved to stand beside a monitor and quickly tapped through several screens. Three dossiers appeared, with Peter, Claire, and Hannah's pictures in the corner. Quickly, she explained, "We had to modify your relationship with Hannah from teen father to custodial brother. She's aging; you're not. You're the Strausses now. Senator Petrelli's connections made it easy to push the fake identities through."

Evie moved to the next monitor, pulling up a registration form. "Next on the agenda, your firearm registration expired, so I renewed it. I had your Company weapons shipped up from Texas. They're being cleaned and you'll find them down in lockup."

Evie moved to another monitor, pulling up a deed of ownership on screen. "As you know, your mother transferred her Manhattan home to Nathan after her death. He, God rest his soul, never got the chance to enjoy it. It's still under the ownership of Senator Petrelli, so if you'd like to move in, you're welcome to. Andrew is staying there, but there are plenty of rooms, as you know. If you'd like other accommodations, I'd be glad to assist you in finding something either here or in the City."

"No," Peter replied, flustered, "we'll start out at my Ma's place."

"Great," Evie replied, typing away on the monitor, "I'll have the moving company take your things there. You should be able to move in maybe a day or two. Until then, continue to make yourself comfortable in the Company dorms."

Evie wiped away all the on-screen documents and pulled up a diploma. "I see Hannah graduated early, so I figure you will not be needing to enroll her in school. Is she interested in looking at colleges? It's not under my duties, but I'd be glad to put her in contact with a college counselor at St. Catherine's Academy."

"I don't think that's on the horizon just yet."

"Then my work is done," Evie replied, handing Peter a stack of three manila envelopes with "Strauss, Peter", "Strauss, Claire", and "Strauss, Hannah" printed on them. "Here are all your documents. And… here is my card." She pulled out a Palm organizer phone and tapped a few buttons. Peter's phone buzzed in his pocket.

After a moment of letting everything sink in, Peter remarked to Barbara, "Okay, if that's her job, what do _you_ do?"

Evie teased, "She gives visitors vertigo."

Peter asked offhandedly, "So she does that to everyone?"

"Oh, yeah."

Barbara explained, "I supervise Miss North."

"She does no such thing," Evie countered, "Barbara is _not_ my supervisor. She is my senior. In many ways." She received a glare and a bout of vertigo which she fought off. "I'd be glad to pull up an org-chart if you wish to dispute this further."

"That won't be necessary. Both Evie and I are Agent Coordinators. We split the workload, as Hartsdale has a great many employees."

"She gets the veteran employees; I get the new ones. And all the extra work that comes with the territory."

"Sorry," Peter apologized for reasons unknown.

"I wasn't complaining; I was bragging," Evie noted, in a tone that could have passed for sweet.

Barbara chimed in, seriously, "Peter, we've received notice that you'll be working on a top-secret, top-priority assignment, so please let us know if there's anything we can do for you."

: : :

Meredith and Charlie  
Primatech Regional Offices  
Midland, Texas  
March 23, 2029

Meredith and Charlie sat in Meredith's office, drinking iced tea from a glass pitcher. Stirring in a spoonful of sugar and a lemon wedge into her glass, Charlie remarked, "This is a real delicacy."

"Sweetie, there's nothing delicate about this tea. What you're drinking is more popular than _water_ in these parts."

"You don't have to tell me about these parts," Charlie remarked with a grin, "I grew up in these parts. These _very_ parts. They do tea very different in Tokyo…" She suddenly looked at her glass as if it were poison. "Oh, no, is this…?"

"It's decaf," Meredith remarked calmly, with a downward glance to Charlie's stomach.

"You can tell?"

"I've had two myself." Meredith then noticed the rings on Charlie's hands.

"He don't know," Charlie remarked, sipping her tea with a faraway gaze, "He was off on one of his little missions. 'Save the world.' I was waiting for him to come back. Then, all of a sudden I'm yanked twenty…" she paused for a moment, doing the calculations in her head, "…sommin' years in the future."

"It's a little more complicated than that," Meredith began.

The conversation was cut short when the group of Hiro, Ando, and Gabriel teleported in.

Charlie leapt up immediately, but froze upon noticing Gabriel, dropping her glass to the floor. She screamed.

Hiro casually turned to Gabriel and remarked, "Maybe we should have waited to bring you."

Charlie stopped screaming just long enough to yell hysterically, "WHY ISN'T NO ONE TRYING TO _KILL HIM_?!"

Gabriel calmly remarked to the equally unaffected Meredith, "Merry, why on earth did you not tell Ginger about my goody-two-shoes, leaf-turning, angels-and-rainbows life choice of ultimate stalwartedness?"

Hiro raced over to his wife to comfort her, "Please, Charlie, Bad Man is bad no more. He is like us: married. A hero. And he has a child."

"Like us," Charlie remarked, tears falling down her face.

"What?" Hiro remarked. Charlie put Hiro hand on her belly. Hiro's widened to the size of saucers before he began to leap up and down. "_Yatta!_" Charlie giggled at the meaning of his exclamation as he hugged her while continuing to leap in place.

Charlie's face fell as Gabriel approached the couple.

"Not to break up this happy occasion," he apologized, "but there's something I think I should say. I obviously tried to kill you in your past. Here, I succeeded. I know there's nothing that I can say or do to make up for that. I've spent twenty years in self-flagellation, and I don't feel as if even one iota of guilt has been lifted from my conscience. I don't expect you to forgive me. I wouldn't forgive you if you did."

Charlie glared at Gabriel for the longest time before asking, stonily, "Your kid. How old?"

"He just turned twenty-one," Gabriel answered, "His name's Noah." He pulled out his wallet. "That's him. That's my penance. If I do one thing right in this world, it's him. He's a hero."

"He's very handsome," Charlie commented airily, handing Gabriel back the wallet, noticing he was staring intently at her.

"Look," she stated, breaking Gabriel's concentration, "I'm willing to take it on faith that you're a better person now, but you've been the source of my nightmares for more'n _three years_. I can't be around you. Much less have you ogling me."

Gabriel blushed. "I wasn't ogling. I was analyzing. You see, I figured out how your husband and Ando got here, but you… I don't know why you're here. Or why they jumped from Barstow, California to Uptown Manhattan. Or why you landed in your old hometown of Midland, Texas from…"

"Tokyo," Charlie finished.

"She fell from the ceiling in the lobby," Meredith remarked.

"I'm just stopping by on my way to New York," Gabriel noted, "whatever Parkman's summoned me for is serious, but… is there any chance I could see the surveillance tapes before I go?"

Gabriel surveyed Charlie again, the gears in his head turning. He couldn't quite lock onto the solution, but he was close. He could feel it.

: : :

Claire Bennet  
Medical Containment  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 23, 2029

A whole set of rapidly dissolving internal organs lay by Claire's supine body. She was still coughing up blood, so she yelled the best she could to the window, "Nuke me." She weakly lay flat, waiting for the intense bright light that filled the room.

When the light faded, all the metal instruments in the room were glowing red with heat and where Claire's body once lay was a smoldering black skeleton.

After a moment, muscles began to regenerate on the bones. Organs grew within the ribs and were soon covered with musculature. Skin covered the muscles. Claire sat up, taking in the first breath of her new lungs; her new eyes adjusted to their first exposure to light. Straw-blond hair grew to its previous length.

Claire opened the automatic doors in the containment room to the airtight anteroom. There she found a set of scrubs which she donned and exited the room. Waiting outside was Dr. Schroeder, Hartsdale's Medical Department Head, and a few other medical professionals reading reports on their monitors. "We thought we'd lost you there." Schroeder was a plain man in his fifties with balding gray hair.

"You didn't," Claire remarked shortly, "So, during the worst of it, what was the microbe count?"

"Nine thousand," Schroeder replied, "Covington maxed out at 1600 before he…" Schroeder was reluctant to finish the statement.

"Died," Claire finished flatly, "We're sure the radiation killed it all?"

"Your blood boiled. The microbe's dead. Speaking of which, I'd like to get one of the medical staff to examine you before—"

"No need. I'm fine," Claire answered, walking toward the door, "If you need me, I'll be with Suresh."

The Medical Department and the Scientific Research Department were in adjacent hallways on Primatech Headquarters' second floor, so it was a short walk for Claire. She bypassed Mohinder's office, where he rarely could be found, and entered the next door, labeled "Biological Division." Mohinder was conversing with his fellow scientists and technicians, all of them wearing white lab coats. The only thing distinguishing them from their boss was Mohinder partially burned necktie.

"What happened, Mohinder?" Claire asked, grabbing his damaged neckwear.

"Bunsen burner. Third time this month."

"Doesn't that annoy the missus?"

"Not in the slightest. Woman loves buying clothes for me," Mohinder replied. "How did the tests go?"

"I'm alive, but I can't seem to fight off the disease."

"Hmm," Mohinder hummed with disappointment, "I was afraid of as much. Come here." He directed her to one side of the lab, where a row of clear plastic boxes were situated on a long desk. Each one housed a different internal organ: a heart, a lung, a liver; a piece of masking tape with "CLAIRE BENNETT" written on them was stuck to each box, and a bag of blood with her name printed on it was being fed to the organs. Metal rods, delivering electricity, kept the organs active.

Mohinder pointed to the case containing a heart. "Can you see what I've put in there with your heart?"

Claire squinted at a two-inch, gray, lemon-shaped organ, "I want to say the thymus, though it's pretty necrotized."

"You're right. We've been feeding it bone marrow…"

"You're creating T-cells to test my immune system. I'm an M.D., too. What's the prognosis?"

"Claire, your regenerative powers are remarkable, but your immune system is average. You say your body can't fight off the disease; you're right. It can only replace organs as they fail. The thymus is attacked early, right before the stomach, causing immunodeficiency before it can begin to fight off the attack."

"So, in other words, we're screwed."

"Not necessarily. We just haven't exhausted all the hypotheses."

"We have other hypotheses?" Claire asked hopefully.

His face darkening, Mohinder replied, "Not yet, but I'm sure we'll think of them," he answered with false optimism that shone through clearly.

: : :

Andrew Petrelli  
Firearm Lockup  
Hartsdale Regional Office  
March 23, 2029

"Thank you very much, Miss North," Andrew replied awkwardly as he took the gun from his blond colleague.

Hannah was sitting at a table, cleaning a number of pistols when she called her cousin over. "So, Andy, do I detect a crush?"

"On Evie? Not exactly," Andrew remarked, "we dated briefly."

"Really?" Hannah replied, neutrally.

"Well, _once_, should I say," he corrected officiously, "We came to a mutual agreement that we were romantically incompatible. She's a very… _intense_ woman."

Hannah muffled a snicker. "She chewed you up and spat you out?" she predicted.

"As it would seem," he answered levelly.

"Word around the water cooler is that you've got your eye on another pretty lady."

"Daniella," Andrew stated dreamily, completely oblivious to Hannah rolling her eyes. "She's intense, too," he thought aloud, "but where Miss North is all walls, Daniella is all…" He reached for a word to finish the metaphor.

"Ga—" Hannah offered, but was cut off after the first syllable.

"Gateway! Of course," Andrew interrupted. After an awkward silence, he asked, "So, she said my gun was ready."

Hannah grabbed the e-paper list before her, "Ruger Mark III Custom." She viewed the image on the paper and grabbed the corresponding firearm: a silver semiautomatic handgun with a long, thick-walled barrel but lightweight grip. It stood out amongst the more familiar-looking Glocks and Sigs.

He held the gun reverently. "My dad had it made for me when I was little. Twenty-two caliber, heavy barrel for low recoil and noise, weighted grip for balance. Mom wouldn't let me touch it until I had a full round of firearm training."

"Smart lady. But I thought Aunt Tracy was all supportive of gun control."

"Gun control, not gun banning. If having half the world as superpowered humans taught us anything, it's that power in the wrong hands in dangerous."

"Why do you talk like that?"

"Like what?"

Hannah stated off a list of facts, "Mom's a Senator. Father was President. Attended the most prestigious private schools in the world. Constantly in the limelight. I rescind the question."

: : :

Molly Walker  
Primatech Research Facility  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 22, 2029

"Dr. Suresh and Miss Bennet to see you, ma'am."

"Let them in, Natalia," Molly replied.

Claire and Mohinder entered the room. The latter was holding a folder, which he handed to Molly.

Claire spoke first, "We've got good news and bad news."

"Give me the bad news first," Molly replied.

"Regenerators won't die of COF," Claire explained.

Molly looked up. "That sounds like the good news."

Claire clarified, "It's a fate worse than death. The body reaches a state of equilibrium where the organs regenerate just as quickly as you can vomit them up."

Molly sighed, "Then what's the good news?"

Claire paused. "Actually, you were right. That _was_ the good news."

"And the bad news is that it's a fate worse than death?" Molly asked hopefully.

"Well, that's the bad news. The Oh-Dear-Lord-in-Heaven news is that the stasis level involves immunodeficiency, meaning my body can't kill the microbe." As Claire narrated, Mohinder pointed to the relevant portions of the documents included in the folder. Claire continued, "I go in there, I become a living, breathing carrier of an airborne plague, spreading it with every breath and every diseased organ that I vomit or expel in other less glamorous ways."

Not blinking, Molly asked, "You're clean now, I hope."

"Radiation kills off the microbe very efficiently," Claire explained.

"Now just brainstorming here: could we do that to Ghali?"

"Irradiate him?" Claire asked.

Mohinder jumped in, "Technically, yes, but that ignores all other variables. The radiation levels required to kill off the microbe are extremely high-intensity. It would kill him. It would have to. He's the source of the virus, not just the carrier."

"I'm not looking for an excuse to kill him, but as a last resort?" Molly offered.

"The radiation required to do that would cause a lot of harm. At those levels, there's no way to control the flow of the radiation. Conservatively speaking, that's killing off every living thing in the room, not to mention leaving the area scorched and radioactive. And, unless it's a lead-lined room, there will be significant fallout in the surrounding area."

"So unless they decide to attack a 75-year-old radiology ward… or the White House."

"They are terrorists," Mohinder noted offhandedly.

Molly noted, "They're not anti-American." She listed off facts, "Appleby's a textbook patriot. Chow and his parents are naturalized citizens. Seuss is a legal resident. Ghali passed all background checks for education visas and college work-study opportunities here. There's not a single thing in their files to indicate any traitorous sentiment. It's very unlikely that it's their motivation."

Mohinder concluded, "We can't try irradiation then. All this is still ignoring Appleby's deflection. We radiate Ghali, we risk radiating the whole city."

"Well, Ghali is still a sticky point." Molly recapped, "But that brings up a good point about Appleby. When we go in, we'll have to hit her hard first. Take her out, tranquilizer or blunt blow to the head."

"She'll deflect," Claire countered.

"Regenerators will heal from it, and it takes away the protection for the Sixers, which is crucial, no imperative, to stopping them. I'm not saying our plans don't have giant gaping holes, but at least we finally _have_ a plan. What about the other two?"

Mohinder noted brightly, "_I_ do have good news. Those two are much easier to deal with. Read on."

: : :

Piccadilly Circus  
London, England  
March 23, 2029, 11:51 PM

The crackling tendrils of light went unnoticed against the bright lights of the city. When the Indian woman of thirty was deposited in an alleyway across the street from the world-famous intersection, no one noticed.

The woman, clad in traditional Indian garbs walked out into the busy streets of London, took one look at the familiar fountain topped by a cherubic figure and remarked, "Oh, this is not good."

: : :

A/N: These past few chapters have been exposition heavy, I know, but I'll start adding some action very soon. It's become obvious that the big showdown with the Sixers will be a singular, climatic battle, so I'm going to spend some time on some recently neglected characters. I know Claire, Peter, Gabriel, and Hiro have been featured prominently, but I _will_ be passing the reins to the next generation, which is the theme of this volume.

Almost halfway through, I finally have a rough plan for the rest of the series. It turns out I have more than enough material. The original plan was twelve chapters, but I can't do it with any less than thirteen, and could easily decide on more depending on how many stray ideas I incorporate. In other news, Volume Three may be on the horizon, and I've got two different directions I'm looking into, so hold on for the ride.

Started 1/22/2010. Finished 2/9/2010.


	8. The Outcome of an Event

Progeny, Chapter 8  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summary: The Company prepares for its offense against the Sixers. Claude meets a woman who knows him from a different time. Andrew goes out on a mission.  
Spoilers: Vaguely Season 3. If you missed the spoiler notice from the previous chapter, this spoils a lot of my other series, "The World Entire."

A/N: Even though the chapters are more even, the size is creeping up slowly, and I suspect that this chapter will be no different.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… Claire attempts to test her ability against the Cascading Organ Failure disease, and the disease seems to come out the victor. Peter is introduced to Barbara and Evie, the agent coordinators, who prepare him for his job. Gabriel attempts to help Hiro and Ando understand their journey to a different universe, and the arrival of Hiro's wife Charlie brings him one step closer. A mysterious Indian woman is deposited in London from the Other Side.

: : :

Chapter 8: The Outcome of an Event

_Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment to understand the bizarre nature of quantum mechanics, where particles could be assumed to exist in multiple states until observed. He likened this to a cat in a sealed box where poison gas either was or was not released. Until the box was opened, the cat must be assumed to be both alive and dead simultaneously. It's a larger way of saying we cannot know the outcome of an event until we have participated it in. So, we must trudge through life judging ourselves ultimately as both successes and failures, sages and fools, heroes and villains. At least until we prove ourselves one way or another. _

: : :

Piccadilly Circus  
London, England  
March 24, 2029

As daylight broke in the city of London, the Indian woman who had just hours earlier appeared out of nowhere made her way to London Pavillion shopping arcade. Entering through the columns of the neo-Greco façade, she made her way to the information desk. To the receptionist, a young woman in her early twenties with dyed black hair and abundant ear piercings, she asked in a noticeable but intelligible Indian accent, "Excuse me, Miss, my mobile seems to be buggered up. Could you direct me to another telephone?"

"Payphones down the hall and around the corner," the receptionist noted, pointing to the left, not looking up from her hand-held computer pad.

"Thank you. You've been most helpful." She bowed reverently and made her way down the hallway of marble floors and high ceilings, and found the payphones, which were an alien combination of computer monitor, displaying a London Pavilion logo screen saver, and headset in a plastic case. Unsure of what to do next, the woman tapped the screen, where she was greeted by an animated spider with multicolored legs. "Hello, welcome to Spyder Communications' telecom vestibule. Please insert a credit, debit, or sterling card, or Euros at this time," the spider said in the Queen's English.

The woman checked her pocketbook, finding rupees and a 50-pound note. She swiped one of her credit cards.

The spider frowned, "I'm sorry, but this card is invalid. If this is not correct, please tap below to report the issue to VISA." The spider pointed to a button that appeared below him. The woman ignored this and instead inserted the 50-pound note into the bill feeder.

The spider suddenly seemed surprised, "It appears that you've entered British pounds. This currency is no longer valid. If you do not have Euros, I can convert this to pounds for an eight percent exchange fee subject to devaluation. Would you like to do this?" A "YES" and "NO" button appeared below the spider, to which the woman pressed "YES."

The spider produced a printing calculator which he did some calculations on, and then, he returned with the message that she had 22,06 Euros, which would provide her with ten minutes of Internet time and just over an hour of phone time.

The spider noted helpfully, "If you know your party's number, you can dial it here; or, if you need to look it up, click the directory button." A phone keypad faded in subtly beside the spider and a button with an open phonebook icon appeared below. The woman tapped the directory button, which opened a new page with a wide assortment of buttons that she couldn't begin to understand how to navigate.

"How do I contact the Company?" she muttered to herself. To her surprise, the computer beeped and displayed a list of company names with phone numbers. A blinking button with a spider icon was displayed on the left part of the screen. When the woman tapped it, the spider slid down on a thread, explaining, "We've found 6.094 companies that you may mean. Organizations that use the name 'The Company' are listed on top." The woman smirked as she saw the United States Central Intelligence Organization was among the entries. "Primatech," she stated. The computer returned with a single entry: "Primatech Solutions, Inc., Intl." She thought it was a mistake, but when she tapped the entry, a popup appeared, displaying familiar data: "Headquarters: Hartsdale, New York, U.S." An assortment of phone numbers appeared under each subsection, all promising more numbers to be found. One of the locations was in London, which she noticed had the lowest rate for calling, so she tapped it. She was again bombarded with a great quantity of numbers, in rows with names and tiny images of faces. The one at the top looked a little familiar.

She mistakenly touched the image and was surprised to see a screen indicating that the phone was dialing. Too quickly, a webcam stream of a young, blonde, buxom woman appeared, not looking at the screen. "Gallifrey Crosby's Office. May I inquire to whom would like to speak with him?" At first, the Indian woman was afraid that she could be seen, but noticed an indicator bar at the bottom informing her that the camera was switched off. She found the headset box unlocked, so she hastily put on the device.

The woman told the secretary her name and the reply came, "Mr. Crosby is very busy, but I'll see if he'll take your call. Please hold."

After a few moments of watching a heartbreakingly awful publicity video for the Primatech Solutions' products to the melody of a post-reunion Spice Girls chart-topper, the screen changed to a video stream of a very angry-looking man who the woman knew as Claude Rains, except that he'd aged twenty years since she last saw him. In his Manc accent, Crosby warned, "You've got a lot of nerve using the name of a dead girl like that. I suggest you turn on your camera and tell me your real name before I have you arrested for fraud."

The woman scrambled to turn on her screen and pleaded to the monitor, "Please, Claude, I didn't know who else to call."

Crosby stared into the monitor for a moment, "Where did you hear that name?"

"I know it's an alias, and your new one is ruddy awful, but it's all I've ever known you as."

"Then explain to me why I have no idea who you are."

"I don't know, Claude. I just randomly appeared here in London and everything's batty and…"

Crosby's face softened as he asked, "Did you perchance arrive here from another time and another place?"

"To say the least."

"And you're really who you say you are?"

"Yes," the woman replied.

"Well, then, Miss Shanti Suresh, I'll send a car for you. I know something who would _really_ like to speak with you."

: : :

Mohinder Suresh  
Scientific Research Division  
Primatech Solutions Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 23, 2029

Inside the Biological Research Lab, Mohinder held up a beaker of yellow-tinged water as if it were liquid gold. Molly and Claire looked on without any sense of enthusiasm.

"What am I looking at?" Molly asked.

"A very specially calibrated cocktail of various adrenal suppressants." He walked over to another area of the room without warning. Molly and Claire ran to catch up. Mohinder stood before one of the departments many organ displays. A heart and another smaller organ were connected. The heart was pumping very quickly.

"You see this?" Mohinder pointed to the small organ above the heart.

"It's an adrenal gland," Claire noted for Molly's sake. "It's probably one of mine."

"Well, yes," Mohinder remarked, "all the organs we use come from your body."

"I hope that you're filing equipment requests for these. I don't want Schroeder complaining that Medical is paying for something that should be coming out of your budget."

"My staff is very thorough and organized. Why are they so costly if a regenerator's body just creates them?"

"Because that whole setup there? I had to wolf down two half-pound bacon cheeseburgers combos to make up the calories. Add in the facilities required to store healthy human body parts. Trust me, it's a fraction of the cost were we to be procuring the organs from people who can't grow spares."

"Anyway, the… adrenaline supplement?" Molly asked.

"Adrenal suppressants."

"That makes more sense," Molly remarked honestly, "Please, Dr. Suresh, continue."

Mohinder eyed Molly for several moments. "_Miss Walker_, I'd be happy to." He took a syringe and transferred some of the yellow liquid into the blood bag hanging above the organ box. "We replicated the endocrine state in this setup." The heart slowed down to a normal rhythm. "This mixture completely counteracts the effects of Seuss's ability."

"Excellent. Is it for Seuss's victims or Seuss himself?" Molly asked.

"Definitely for the victims, and I suspect it also might be effective in suppressing his ability. If nothing else, it will act as a sedative, making him easier to capture."

"Excellent. Anything else?" Molly asked.

"Yes," Mohinder replied, leading the group into another room labeled "Special Weaponry."

Mohinder greeted one of the scientists, a Hispanic man with a name badge stating Casper Dubois. He pulled out what appeared to be a can of spray paint. He sprayed it on a mannequin hand, covering it in what appeared to be latex.

"This is interesting technology."

Casper chuckled, and Mohinder suppressed one, and Claire rolled her eyes.

"Excuse me, people, am I missing something?"

Casper pulled out a smaller can colorfully labeled, "Condom-Inna-Can." "My girl turned me on to the stuff. I used it as inspiration. Unfortunately, the output rate and actual product quantity is too low. If they'd made this in Gigolo Size, our work would have been done for us."

Molly didn't look amused.

"Eh, well, actually, we actually changed more for our product. We put it under higher pressure and use a hard rubber instead of latex. It comes faster, hotter, and grittier, which should help in disabling the assailant from both an ability and a pain standpoint. I'll actually get someone on mass-production of this stuff, because it'll work on any Special whose ability manifests through their hands. You know, I never got many details on the Special this was made for."

"Unfortunately, that's on a need-to-know basis, Casper," Mohinder replied authoritatively, "You've done excellent work. Consider yourself in a cog in a world-saving machine."

Casper shivered. "Ooh, really? I just a got a chill."

Claire's phone vibrated, "Hey; Schroeder needs an update. Look, Molly, I'll check in with you later."

Mohinder and Molly exited the lab, but Molly followed Mohinder back to his office.

"Sorry about the whole 'Dr. Suresh' thing, Mohinder," Molly said.

"Quite all right, Molly, we're in a professional setting," he admitted, "It is odd though hearing it come from someone I used to cook macaroni and cheese for."

"Made from scratch, with real cheese, with little bits of broccoli snuck in. Always with some kind of fruit on the side," Molly recited warmly. "Mohinder, I know that if it hadn't been for your mutation, you would have stepped in to care for me just as quickly as my dad."

"I do love you, Molly," Mohinder replied.

Hugging her godfather, Molly replied, "I love you, too, Mohinder. And don't let me ever catch you forgetting it again. "

: : :

Noah and Daniella  
Primatech Solutions Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 24, 2029

Noah Gray sat on the couch in Daniella Parkman's office with his legs crossed underneath him, leaning forward with his chin in his hands. "I'm still having the nightmares," he whispered.

Daniella, who was sitting on the floor in her beanbag chair, nodded politely.

Looking into space, Noah related, "I'm falling into one of the faults. I can see a Vise above me. When I hit the magma, it's not too bad. Just like in real life, I barely feel it. I know what's going to happen next, but I don't climb back out. It's like I'm just reliving the event, like my body doesn't know…" Noah become agitated, stopping to catch his breath.

"Hey, it's okay," Daniella said sweetly, holding out her hands and smiling.

"No, stop," Noah quickly ordered, "I need to get through this without your vibes."

"I'm sorry," Daniella replied, hurt.

"No, I didn't mean for that to come out so harsh," Noah apologized, trying his best to exude emotions like Dani did.

"I understand completely," Dani answered, matter-of-factly.

"I'm in the fault," Noah began again, catching Dani's eyes one more time before retreating back into his memory, "at first, there's nothing. I figure that it's just a waste of time, but then…" He takes a minute to collect himself, "It _hurts_. I may not be intimately familiar with pain, but I have enough events to recognize it. It hurts on _the inside_. This was _everywhere_. It was in my bones. I'd never felt like this before; it felt like I was _sad_. That's… when the coughing started, the-the liquid in my throat. I thought I was drowning again. And I was thinking, 'I can't drown.' Not since that pool in Acapulco in 2018. Then I wasn't thinking… I-I couldn't. Everything got fuzzy and next thing I know I'm completely submerged. I opened my eyes and am immediately thankful for acid bath I took because I'm pretty sure that molten rock in your eyes hurts like hell. So I scramble out of the fault, clawing my way up the wall and…"

"…that's when you wake up?" Daniella asked.

"Yeah," Noah lied.

"You stopped talking about your dream a long time ago," Daniella told him, humming a tune. "You were talking about the real event."

"There's no difference," Noah remarked angrily, "The dreams; they're like reliving the whole goddamn experience. Five years. A hundred times, maybe a thousand. I don't go to sleep anymore; I just keep going until I pass out. I hate remembering what I did."

"You say that like you did it on purpose."

"I don't know if I didn't. I mean, every time… _it_ happens, I get stronger. There's a high cost: pain and death, but I'll admit it's tempting. But…" He paused, "I know what you're thinking."

"That's _my_ power," Daniella hinted, "_You're_ the one thinking it."

Noah was suddenly intuitively alert to the ticking of the antique clock across the room. He skipped back, "I wonder if it happened too many times. As a kid, if I got myself into too many dangerous accidents… too many _fatal_ accidents."

"There's a lot of horses near my Grandpa's house."

Noah looked up, confused.

"And when you're seven, they look unicorns. Except unicorns shouldn't step on you."

"Uh…"

"And lightning is _so_ pretty. And thunder makes you shake when you're really little. And rain is cold as ice but you don't care. You run to the top of the hill just to be a part of it."

"Dani…"

"_Maman_ has really fast reflexes."

Noah sighed, "Okay, Dani, I get it. Dying so often as a child, it wasn't unlucky."

"Kids only die once," Daniella replied, with an inscrutable combination of emotions, "And that's if they're really, really, really really unlucky. And if their families are really unlucky."

"Dani…"

Dani cut in, uncharacteristically livid, "Have you ever been to a funeral for a little kid? I have. I had a fit."

"I can understand why. That's why you didn't go to Covington and Kader's memorial service."

"I cried for them all by myself. I knew people were going to visit me the next day. I was right. They came everyday for three weeks. I missed _Swinger Swap _three times."

"I've upset you, Dani," Noah apologized, "Look, I'm already late for my appointment with Walker and Redhouse. I'll leave."

"Noah, it's okay," Daniella answered, "I love it when you visit me. I always schedule extra time afterwards."

Noah smiled and knelt down beside Daniella and kissed her on the forehead.

"You're very cathartic," she mused, not looking at Noah.

Noah didn't know what to make of that. He nodded and left, looking back often on his short trip to the door. Daniella didn't look back once, just closed her eyes and swayed.

Once he was gone, Daniella tumbled to the ground, her face stricken with grief. After several minutes of pouting, weeping, and shivering, she miraculously calmed. Serenely, she made her way to a cabinet on the far side of the room, opening it to reveal an assortment of religious icons: a diverse selection of crosses, a menorah, and a statuette of Buddha. She lit some incense and heated up some chamomile tea in her mother's French antique teapot, inhaling the aromas.

: : :

Micah Sanders  
Primatech Solutions Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 24, 2029

When Andrew walked into Micah's office, he found both Micah and his partner, Will Pine, waiting for him. Up on one of Micah's many screens was a dossier, with the photograph of a fifty-something man with slicked-back black hair.

"Hovey," remarked Andrew dryly, "Let me guess, he's been knocking back flutes again."

"He likes to hear the music," Micah groaned, "He turned the front wall of an Italian restaurant in Bensonhurst to rubble."

"And somebody _noticed_?" Andrew quipped, "I wish the police would get this drug off the streets. Specials losing control of their abilities is not a good thing."

"We'll set up a press conference," Will suggested sarcastically.

"Standard story: acid rain and sandstone brick," Micah mentioned.

Andrew and Will left Micah's office, heading to the garage. Neither noticed Hannah following them ten steps behind, pretending to look at her screen. On the screen, above her work list was a digital sticky note stating "C88".

Inside the garage, as Will was checking out the fob from an automated machine, Hannah snuck to the opposite side of the black Maxima in parking spot C-88, where she waited until the duo got close enough for the cars doors to unlock, at which point she silently got into the trunk at the same moment Andrew and Will crawled into the car.

: : :

Savannah Rose Lemay  
Primatech Solutions Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 24, 2029

Savannah roamed the halls of Primatech almost aimlessly. She carried a white computer tablet. The bottom window featured a list of supplies and software to be ordered; the top window featured a solitaire card game. Every so often, she looked up and walked to the next office door, stopped, and continued playing her game.

Upon reaching the office bearing the nameplate "Alex Woolsly", she ambled in through the open door. The man in the office was around forty, tall, lean, and black-haired.

He looked up and smiled, "Well, if it isn't little Savannah Rose. You're really growing up."

"I'm 19," she pointed out.

Alex looked flustered for a moment, remarking coolly, "Well, that put my comment into a different context. Let's not tell your dad."

Savannah grinned. "Don't worry about it, Alex. I'm not here about me."

"Why are you here? And by 'here', I don't just mean my office, I mean Primatech. Your dad said you were in school."

"_Going_ to be in school. This fall. Until them, I'm stuck wandering around the building pretending to fill priority resource orders."

"Speaking of which, I was supposed to get the financial lookup software a week ago. Go bug Micah for me, would you?"

"You know my sister moved here," Savannah remarked, ignoring the request.

"It's the talk of the office," Alex replied, pushing away his keyboard and leaning back in his chair.

"You haven't been by to see her."

"She just got here," he reasoned, "I'll stop by to see her eventually."

Savannah scrutinized Alex for a moment then in a chipper tone of voice, answered, "Well, I'll go personally deliver that software request to Micah myself."

: : :

Andrew and Will  
21st Avenue South  
Brooklyn, NY  
March 24, 2029

Andrew and Will dove behind the sedan they'd driven to 21st Avenue in. Behind them, a slab of stone crashed to the ground, throwing up dust and tossing chucks of stone into the air, breaking at least one of the car's windows. The slab was the outside wall of the second story apartments above the café that Gordon Hovey was slowly destroying by converting the load-bearing walls into sand in his drugged state.

Andrew was the first to see his sixteen-year-old cousin crouching beside him. "Hannah?"

"Hey," she replied, as if they'd casually run into each other on the sidewalk.

"What are you doing? We're on a case."

Taking a peek over the car, she remarked, "Well, I'm on the case with you then. I more qualified anyway."

"You're not trained," he hissed.

"I'm in the process," Hannah defended, "And my ability is more useful than yours. You gonna swim at this guy?"

"We're very close to the Bay. If he were to try to jump in, I'd be able to catch him. The northeast is filled with lakes, rivers, and a huge coastline. My ability comes in handy."

"_If_ the target jumps into water," Hannah repeated.

"I also have full training and two years of experience. My firearm test scores are in the ninetieth percentile. And…"

Andrew was cut off by the crashing of a window. He and Will stood up and peered through the windows of the car to see that a rod-iron porch had joined the rubble pile. Hannah followed suit, and had to be pulled down by Andrew.

"Finish the pedigree later, Petrelli," Will ordered, "I'm the lead agent here. So, girlie, what's your power?"

"Multiple. I was a mimic: regeneration, lightning, pyrokinesis, enhanced sight, hearing, strength."

Will looked impressed. "Fine, you can stay, but you follow my lead."

"She's sixteen!" Andrew protested, "Her dad is Peter Petrelli. He'll kill us."

"Then you better not let anything happen to her, Petrelli. Well, Pollyanna, welcome to the Company. So this is what we're gonna do…"

Gordon Hovey stumbled around drunkenly, tripping over the chairs and tables of a sidewalk café that had long been abandoned by its patrons after chunks of building started crashing to the ground.

"Hovey!" Will called out. Hovey turned to look at the man in a dark suit. His mind was too foggy to comprehend what was going on. Will fired a gun at him and he leapt back, but it was only a stun gun. The metal probes turned to dust the moment they stabbed his body. The sudden pain caused him to lurch around, falling backwards into the wall. Unfortunately, it was at the divide between the café and a Sam's comic book shop, so he crashed not only into the outside wall, but a dividing wall as well. The floors above sagged, with ominous cracks emerging from the site of Hovey's fall.

He looked up and then pulled himself up, trying to run toward the street.

"Not so fast, Sandman," Hannah called, ripping an iron bar from the fallen patio. She held it up threatening at the confused, middle-aged man. "We don't want to hurt you," Hannah explained, none too convincingly, "but if you try to hurt anyone else." She wagged the bar threateningly.

Hovey swung at her, but Hannah easily dodged, knelt down, and tried to sweep Hovey's legs with the bar; where the bar came into contact with his legs, both the strips of his pant legs and the metal dissolve into sand. Hannah panicked, but Andrew yanked her out of the way. No sooner than Hannah got a chance to thank him, she had to roll him away and kick Hovey as he descended upon her, her leg dissolving away as he fell forward.

When Andrew pulled himself up, he was greeted by the frightening sight of Hovey passed out, face-down, six inches deep in the sidewalk and no Hannah.

His panic was short-lived as he heard Hannah groan and push Hovey off of her, pulling herself out of the sandy pit, her flesh, and her left in particular, regenerating before his eyes.

"Let me guess," Hannah remarked, "his power goes away when he loses consciousness."

"Yep," Will answered, grabbing a box out of the company car. And he knelt by Hovey to inject him with a syringe that he pulled from the box, he remarked, "This should give him temporary clarity."

After a few minute, Hovey sat up, "What's going on?"

"You fell off the wagon, Mr. Hovey," Will stated.

"What? No. I'm here for NA," Hovey stated.

Andrew challenged the statement, "Which one? Sabbia's Ristorante? Shore Café? Sam's Comics?"

"Saint Albert's," Hovey replied weakly, pointing across the street, where there was a large church, St. Albert's Episcopal.

Andrew ran to investigate. Will knelt down and explained, "Mr. Hovey, when we got here, you were clearly under the influence of flutoprazepam, which we know you have a problem with."

"I'm clean," he replied, pulling out a green poker chip emblazoned with "4 MONTHS."

Andrew returned and said, "There was an NA meeting just over an hour ago." To Hovey, he asked skeptically, "You skip this one?"

Hovey pondered for a moment, and looked at his watch, "No, I went today. I remember because Kira finally spoke today."

"Well, you got flutes in your system somehow, Gordon," Will explained patronizingly, "so we'll take you to the drunk tank until you detox."

"Thanks," Hovey replied, his mind getting foggier again before passing out.

Will instructed Andrew and Hannah, "Take him back and put him in a Level 1 cell. I'll handle the cover story."

Andrew gave a mock salute to Will and loaded Hovey's body into the back seat.

Hannah asked, "Hey, Andy, any chance we can keep this little adventure from my dad?"

"Never call me 'Andy' again and you've got a deal."

: : :

Vic and Sparrow  
Primatech Solutions Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 24, 2029

Vic sat in Sparrow's chair in her office and Sparrow sat in his lap, with her arms wrapped around his neck and her hand brushing against his hair. His hairstyle hadn't changed in twenty years but the color had: it had faded from black to a still-handsome dark gray.

"It's good to be queen," Vic remarked, surveying the spacious office.

"Aren't I more, like, duchess? Parkman's technically king. And we're all his little subjects."

"Hmm," Vic mused, "The Duke and Duchess of Hartsdale. I like it. We should get a horse-drawn carriage."

"Ooh, will that replace your Roadster?"

"Don't even tease. That was a '15 370Z Limited Edition that I spent four years customizing…"

Sparrow cut her husband off with a kiss.

Natalia's voice's came over the phone speaker, "Noah Gray to see you, Miss."

"Let him in," Sparrow answered immediately. She attempted to get off her husband's lap, but he grasped her waist and held her in place. "Vic," she nagged, "I am the boss here and I need to present authority…"

The door opened and Noah immediately apologized, "Miss Redhouse, I apologize…"

Sparrow laid a quick slap against her husband's forearm, escaping from his hold. "Vic, if you'll excuse us," she noted in a fiery tone.

"Are you sure I can't be of any help?"

"I'm sorry, _kwewu_, but it's about Project Number Six."

Vic frowned, "You're taking this top secret thing seriously."

"It's bigger than me, Sweetheart," Sparrow said.

"_Te amo_," Vic whispered, giving his wife a peck on the lips.

"_Te amo_," Sparrow said back.

Vic bumped fists with Noah on the way out and promised him a private session at the shooting range before leaving.

Once she was alone with Noah, Sparrow tapped a few keys on her computer. At first, Noah couldn't figure out what happened, but soon his ears picked up on the subtle dull noise in the background, which resembled the crackle of static on a radio.

"Noise cancellation," Sparrow explained, "and a signal scramble. I bet your wondering why I ordered you and your father here."

"Is it about 'Project Number Six'?"

"Yes," Sparrow answered plainly.

"Why me?" Noah remarked, "I mean you've got my Uncle Peter, and my dad, and Claire, all agents with decades more experience than me. I mean, for the first two and a half years, I was part time, and I only just started working full time since I took the sabbatical…"

Sparrow cut Noah off, pulling up four folders on the large double-monitor behind her. "Noah, what I'm about to tell you is top secret." She tapped each folder, which opened, revealing a dossier. "Noah, are you aware of Level 6?"

: : :

Mohinder Suresh  
Primatech Solutions Regional Office  
London, England  
March 24, 2029

Mohinder appeared in London via remote teleportation by Misha Chobham, one of Hartsdale's human resource officers. He found himself in the lobby of the Primatech regional office, where he strode to the front desk and asked the receptionist there to see Gallifrey Crosby. He stuttered for a moment, but Claude was waiting in a collection of chair in the far corner of the room. He told the receptionist, "I'll take it from here."

Once through the double doors, Mohinder asked immediately, "Is it true? My sister is here?"

Claude said nothing but gestured ahead, where a strikingly beautiful Indian woman stood in a red silk dress, looking at Mohinder with glee.

Mohinder stared at the woman with keen interest before he realized her identity. "Shanti?" Mohinder breathed, taking off his glasses.

Shanti walked over, hugged Mohinder, and kissed his cheek. "It's good to see you, _tampi_. Whatever's going on, it's very bizarre."

"I know. We're trying to figure it out. You're the fourth person we know about that's… arrived."

Claude interrupted, "Perhaps we should take this to my office."

Inside Claude's office, Shanti giggled at the wallet-sized photograph of Mohinder and Barbara. "I can't believe you married a _gora_," she remarked, "This is how I remember you, younger."

"You were much younger the last I knew of you as well."

Shanti's brow furrowed, "How did I die?"

"An unknown virus," Mohinder replied, "we named it the Shanti virus."

"Forgive me if I'm not honored."

"We believed it had something to do with your ability."

"My ability? Mohinder, my ability is to suppress other abilities. There's a protein in my blood and sweat. Let me show you. Claude, could you _disappear_?"

Claude nodded and faded from sight. Shanti reached out and grasped something. At first, there was only the barest of a ghostly form, but after a moment, Claude became completely opaque, with Shanti holding his hand. When she released it, he quickly faded again.

Mohinder was awestruck. "And you never got sick?"

"No, I did. I know the sickness you're talking about. I manifested my ability when I was five. A few months later, I came down with a cold. I got very sick after that. Father called the Company. They'd been soliciting his expertise, but he was wary until I got sick. He asked them if they could cure me, and they said they might have a way. They brought this man, Colin, and he was able to save me."

"The cold virus mutates very readily on its own."

"And Colin saves me every time," Shanti said with an unusual amount of affection.

"I take it he's a dear friend?"

"He's my husband," she admitted.

"But if he were already a man when you were five…"

"Colin is a bit older than me, yes."

"Mohinder," Claude remarked, "you think perhaps it's time to call Gabriel?"

Ten minutes later, Gabriel's face appeared on one of the large monitors in Claude's office. It was accompanied by Shanti screaming in fury, "Mohinder! I know this man! He killed Father!"

"This is getting old," Gabriel remarked pithily, laying his head on his hand.

After a long explanation, Shanti was calmed down. She still glared at Gabriel with disgust, but allowed him to talk.

"I know why Hiro and his loyal sidekick crossed the void, but I can't figure what dragged his Texan bride and your dead sister…" Gabriel stopped mid-sentence and turned away from the camera.

"Oh, here comes the epiphany," Mohinder stated dryly, "That's what he does, have epiphanies."

"In between killing innocent people?"

"Yes," Mohinder answered with no shame.

Gabriel was too absorbed in his thought processes to refute the comment. "What do all the people who have traveled here have in common?"

"We know them?" Mohinder guessed, "They're all Specials."

"They're _dead_."

"Excuse me," Shanti spat.

"In our world, these travelers are deceased. The death leaves a gap for them to fill."

"Because, what? One soul can occupy a universe?" Mohinder remarked skeptically.

"Is it so bizarre, Dr. Genetic Professor? Molly can sense an intangible essence that uniquely identifies a person." Gabriel paused and pointed out, "It's like Schrödinger's cat."

"You're grossly misusing that analogy," Mohinder commented cuttingly.

"When Hiro and Ando traveled here, they had to come through some hyperdimensional portal that they created. I bet the rabbit hole hasn't been closed. I think people are going to keep falling through."

"What are you saying?" Claude asked.

Ominously, Gabriel continued, "I'm saying that any person who is dead in our world could be pulled from this other universe. And, given the pattern, I think it's somebody we know. So far, we've been lucky. The people who've passed are allies and loved ones. I'm just saying, we've killed some powerful people, and for good reason. What if one of _them_ comes through?"

: : :

Tokyo Sky Tree  
Tokyo, Japan  
March 25, 2029

The man once called Adam Monroe suddenly found himself on the deck of an unfamiliar building. Looking over the side, he saw the Yamagato building a few blocks over. He looked down and saw that he was more than a hundred stories up. He looked up and saw that the remainder of the silver lattice tower was a giant antenna.

"Well," he commented in his typical dry British accent, "this is interesting."

: : :

A/N: I dearly hope you're not just blazing through these chapters. I put a lot of detail into these. I've got a planning outline, a character chart, a timeline, and multiple fact sheets. I scour HeroesWiki for characters to reintroduce. I check Google Maps for locations and landmarks. I check BehindTheName so that my characters have meaningful and era-appropriate monikers. I have half a dozen Wikipedia pages open at a time so that my chapters are properly researched. If you're interested in seeing all the work I put in, check out my user pages at HeroesWiki.

I didn't know what I was going to do with Daniella, but I finally got to know her in writing this chapter, like I hope you did by reading it. I approached this chapter hoping to add some action and explore Noah, but I found that my muse had a lot more in store. Frankly, this is what I hoped would happen, because these new characters are the future of this series.

I want you to ignore everything I said in the last author's note about Volume Three. I completely scrapped the idea to introduce the other universe here. That will be Volume Three (which I anticipate to be very short) and Volume Four will follow, also probably not too long. So, a full-length Volume One, a shortened Volume Two, and half-length Volumes Three and Four; yeah, just like the show. I did not plan it like that.

Started 2/9/2010. Finished 2/24/2010.


	9. Past, Present, Future

Progeny, Chapter 9  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes_  
Genre: Action  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summary: Adam Monroe makes his way to the Company. Molly instructs the Project Six Team on their coming mission.  
Spoilers: Vaguely Season 3. If you missed the spoiler notice from the previous chapter, this spoils a lot of my other series, "The World Entire."

A/N: I have no doubt I'm torturing some of you with these slow updates. A lot of it is that I'm legitimately busy with a new job and moving out of my apartment. Another is that sequels are always a massive undertaking. In addition, I'm a three-act writer. I plan Acts I and III first; I know where I want to start and I know where I want to end, and so those chapters are fast-paced. But it's Act II where I devote my time. It's where I can delve into the characters and weave the plots that I started in the first act and set them up for Act III. As such, those always come slowest, because I'm being meticulous.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… Shanti Suresh comes from the other side and reconnects with her brother. Mohinder uses his resources to help Claire and Peter prepare for the Sixers. Noah has a therapy session with Daniella. Micah sends Andrew and his partner Will on a dangerous mission, and Hannah tags along. Savannah visits Alex in his office to discuss her sister's arrival. Sparrow brings Noah up to date on Project Six. The man once known as Adam Monroe comes through the void in Tokyo.

: : :

Chapter 9: Past, Present, Future

_If there is anything that has perplexed not only the scientific community, but the religious and philosophical communities too, it's the notion of time. The Greek sophist Antiphon said, "Time is not a reality, but a concept or a measure." Yet Science could do little without time. It is a fundamental physical quantity, which must of our understanding of the universe would cease to exist without it. The **speed** of light would be meaningless. Energy, defined as the agent of change, disappears if we can't understand the differences in an object from moment to moment. And what is this cause-and-effect that is so close to the heart of science? In the last hundred years, physics has been overturned; Einstein and his successors thought of time as tangible, something relative to space and the observer. They state that time did not exist before the Big Bang. For those of us living in the moment, time is all too real. The past is like a ghost, haunting us. The future is the shoreline in the distance that we race toward. The present is a hurricane that we're in the middle of, utter chaos that we have no hope of controlling. We cannot avoid it, though. We can do little without time._

: : :

Adam Monroe  
Tokyo, Japan  
March 25, 2029

The man once known as Adam Monroe descended in the Sky Tree's elevator. It was late at night and the building was deserted.

He walked into the cool Tokyo air. At first, he didn't notice, but after a while he saw through Tokyo's ultra-modern façade to realize the setting actually _was_ futuristic. Tokyo never slept and too many of the cars on the road seemed too sleek. The colorful advertisements on the clear acrylic windows were not rear-projection. Everyone in city could not be going to a costume party; the brighter colors and unfamiliar cuts actually _were_ the fashion.

Adam swiftly pick-pocketed a passing businessman on his way either to or from a karaoke bar. He pulled out a credit card and tossed the wallet aside. He found an Internet café and quickly got to work. The machines were unfamiliar but he'd spent enough time in America in the 1950s to recognize the technology they'd be trying to build for years.

_Twenty years gone. The Company's still here. Under new leadership, though. _Adam grew frustrated after discovering that all of the Company website's backdoors had been replaced. He memorized the dozens of faces that he saw of salespeople, accountants, and receptionists, many of them no doubt agents.

_I'll find you, my sweet, and I know just where to start._

Adam logged off his computer, swiped the wallet of the patron beside him reading erotic fanfiction, and turned in the karaoke businessman's credit card at the front desk, claiming he'd found it left behind.

: : :

Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 25, 2029

Mohinder and Shanti appeared in Mohinder's office. He picked up his phone, asked it for Misha, and thanked her for the transportation.

When he looked up, he found his daughter waiting for him in a chair.

"Oh! Shanti! I'd like you to meet your niece, Mila. Mila, this is your Aunt Shanti." He brought the two women together.

"She's lovely," Shanti remarked, taking Mila's hand, "It's very nice to meet you, Mila."

Mila however, stared at Shanti with surprise. "I'm sorry, it's just you look so familiar…"

An apparition of Shanti, wearing a very traditional sari, appeared behind Mila. "You see, this is Sita, my imaginary friend from when I was a child," Mila explained.

"She has a lovely name," Shanti remarked.

"I named her after the princess in _The Journey of Rama_."

"Who on Earth read you _Ramayana_ as a child?" Mohinder asked incredulously.

"It was a Disney movie. They needed a Bombay princess to complete the rainbow set."

"Oh, that's right," Mohinder responded, disappointed.

"You didn't tell me you had a daughter with your _gora_," Shanti remarked accusingly.

"No, I had a relationship with a woman named Maya, Mila's mother, a _speni_."

"Well, Mohinder, wouldn't Mother and Father be proud?" she playfully snipped.

: : :

Project Six Team  
Freedom Plaza  
Manhattan, New York

Peter, Claire, Gabriel, and Noah walked in a tight line through the front opening of Freedom Plaza. They wore full black militia gear, armed to the teeth.

"_They'll choose a public place," Molly explained, "some place with a lot of people. Let's say Freedom Plaza." The Project Six Team sat in one of the smaller planning rooms, looking at a map of Lower Manhattan on an interactive computer table. _

Another group of four entered Freedom Plaza from the east. The Sixers sauntered in, wearing civilian clothes but sticking out like sore thumbs. Beautiful, dark-haired Heather Appleby was dressed in a 1940s-era white ball gown. Marcus Chung wore a black basketball jersey over sagging jeans, black high-tops, and a black do-rag, with a pistol clearly visible in his waistband. Joseph Ghali was decked in a white kufi over khaki robes. Gregory Seuss wore an army uniform of unknown origin, dark drab lined with abundant red.

"_But not Freedom Plaza," Gabriel pointed out, "They're not anti-Americans; they wouldn't choose a place that's so emblematic. Nor open. They've been strictly indoors. But public and crowded, yes."_

"_Something like Grand Central Station?" Peter offered. _

"_Exactly," Gabriel replied. _

Project Six Team  
Grand Central Station  
New York, New York

The Project Six Team descended the stairs into the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station through the North entrance, finding the Sixers looking particularly nefarious, eyeing the multitude of passer-byers with disdain.

"_You'll need to seal the building," Molly pointed out, "I'll send men behind you to lock everyone in. First order of business is to split up. We want to surround them."_

The Project Six Team entered with one agent from every direction: Gabriel from the North, Noah from the South, Peter from the East, and Claire from the West. They were clad in paramilitary gear with rifles raised.

"_The first Sixer we need to take out is Appleby. She's protecting the others. Someone needs to get in there and dope her. We need to go in soft." _

The Project Six Team entered inconspicuously in civilian clothing, pistols hidden in their jackets and belts.

"_It should be me," Claire offered, "I'll be the one to take out Appleby. Everyone else has active powers. If I bear the brunt of her deflection, it's okay if I'm taken out of the game early. _

Claire approached Appleby and at the last moment pulled out a tranq gun.

"_Won't work," Noah pointed out, "she'll deflect the moment you pull out the gun. And if they're already in the middle of the attack, she'll have her guard up anyway."_

"_We'll need to make some noise, then, a distraction," Peter remarked, "Nothing too close, though. We don't want throwback on __**us**__." _

Peter, Gabriel, and Noah created a ruckus. Electricity and fire lit up the room; kiosk store items went flying through the air, some hitting perilously close to where Appleby was standing. Claire snuck up from behind and shot a tranquilizer dart into the overwhelmed Appleby, who fell to the ground unconscious moments later.

"_The next person to contain," declared Molly, "is Ghali. COF is only contagious short-range. Everyone in the room won't get sick all at once. The objective is to let as few people become infected. We'll do what we can for those who do, but remember, those of you with savior complexes, we may not be able to save everybody." _

Gabriel and Noah held Ghali still while Peter injected him with a sedative.

"_Here lies the big hole in our scenario," Claire pointed out, "We're still susceptible to COF. We'll survive, but not well." _

Gabriel and Noah fell to the ground, coughing up blood.

_Molly bypassed the comment, "It's not like there's no hope. We're still working on it. If all else fails, we'll equip you with gas masks." _

The four agents slipped on gas masks before taking out Ghali.

_Molly continued, "I'd recommend Seuss next. You're no good if you're fighting one another. I understand that fights between a certain two of you have a certain… apocalyptic quality."_

_Peter and Gabriel faced away from each other sheepishly. _

The light from the lightning and fire being exchanged by Peter and Gabriel could be seen clearly from outside the terminal through Grand Central's iconic sun windows, a few of which exploded out.

Back inside, Seuss is surrounded by a group of three large men punching each other with abandon. Claire, from the top of the staircase, fired special tranquilizer darts, knocking out Seuss and calming the three men, plus Peter and Gabriel.

Elsewhere, Noah dodged a swipe of Chung's right hand, which caused a small explosion when he touched the ground, tossing small rocks around. Noah recovered quickly, sweeping Chung's leg and hitting the back of his head, disabling him.

"_All right, we've made a lot of progress today," Molly remarked, sounding too much like a teacher. "We could be getting the call any day now, so spend some time with your loved ones." _

: : :

Daniella and Andrew  
Primatech Solutions Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 26, 2029

"You wanna talk about your dad?" Daniella half-asked, half noted matter-of-factly.

"I'm quite tired of talking about my father," Andrew replied.

"He's like _always_ on your mind."

"It shouldn't be any surprise that he would be. He died saving me from a crashing plane. He's President Superhero. It's like an action movie. They've actually made two movies about it. One of them featured Nicolas Cage."

"You're mad that you barely know him."

"We've had this discussion a thousand times before, Dani," Andrew complained.

"We could talk about your mom," she suggested.

"No!" Andrew refused, louder than he wanted to.

"Can I talk about her then?" Daniella suggested, "I could tell you why—"

"I don't need my mother explained. There are _plenty_ of biographies and in-depth interviews on the subject. I find her to be a remarkable woman who overcame great odds and tragedies. I owe her everything."

"Well, we could talk about your childhood."

"'It wasn't private. I'm the son of a President. I spent the first eighteen years of my life surrounded by Secret Service.' Conversation had. Dani, I don't want to talk about _me_."

"Then why'd you come to talk to me? I may not be a board-certified psycholomagist, by I know how to make people feel better."

"Dani, you know me inside and out. I think you know why, in defiance to every police stereotype in existence, why I come regularly, promptly, and eagerly to my counseling appointments."

"We're not going to talk about _me_," she replied plainly, "for one, I find the subject tedious. And more importantly, it won't help you any."

"You don't vibe me anymore."

"It won't help you any either. You're nothing but calm exterior. I gotta dig deep with you."

Andrew steely arose and bowed his head. "It's been a pleasure, Daniella. I'll see you at our next appointment."

Daniella didn't move as her friend left. She simply chewed on the end of her stylus as if nothing else had happened.

"I need some lime Jell-O _right now_," she muttered.

: : :

Claire Bennet  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 26, 2029

On her computer monitor, Claire video-conferenced with Micah, "Yeah, nothing's working."

"I'm getting nothing but error messages on my end. Shut down your machine and I'll run some diagnostics. It looks like there's just a software issue dealing with mainframe syncing related to the special data restrictions Molly had me put on the Number Six project."

Claire nodded. "Whatever it takes," Claire remarked.

There was a knock at the door, and Alex Woolsly walked in.

Claire fumbled to a standing position, calling out awkwardly, "Alex!"

"Hi, Claire," Alex noted, unsure of his words, "Sorry I didn't come by earlier."

"No, no, no; I-I understand. Plus, Misha was very competent. Consider me initiated."

"I don't want this to be weird," Alex let out too soon.

"No, it doesn't have to be. We've worked together before."

"Peter's not here," Alex brought up abruptly.

"He went to talk to Molly. I think he has a bit of a crush on Natalia."

"I can see why," Alex commented. His eyes immediately popped open as he apologetically stated, "I'm sorry; that was inappropriate."

"No, I'm right there with you. Sparrow has good taste for a straight woman."

Alex seemed incapable of speech—or movement—for a few seconds before clarifying, "No, I was actually referring to the sexual harassment aspect. It's not the kind of mistake your HR manager's supposed to make."

"Well, since we all know you've _never_ violated the fraternization policy."

"Claire, that's not fair."

Claire just grinned, "I'm just messing with you, Alex." She sincerely remarked, "You look good."

"So do you."

"I look the same. You, on the other hand, have only gotten better with age. What you're secret for looking so good in a suit, making me regret certain decisions?"

"I swim," Alex replied, answering the safest part of her question, "There's a pool in this joint for obvious reasons."

"Swimming? And you were doing so well avoiding certain topics."

: : :

Alex and Claire  
Ten Miles West of Ventura Beach  
July 3, 2015

As far as Claire could see, there was nothing but the crystal clear blue ocean. Ecobots, built off of Micah Sanders' design, soared in the sky and swam through the sea, feeding on pollutants, making it the most beautiful Fourth of July weekend the world had seen in years.

Claire was growing weary of treading water. She and Alex had decided to have an endurance race. Claire had underestimated her body's ability to repair damage against Alex's superior swimming experience.

He took hold of her, wrapping his arms around her torso, holding her up as he treaded water for the both of them.

"Somebody lost their swimsuit," he remarked coyly.

Claire pressed her body closer to his. "I'm not the only one."

Claire wrapped her arms around Alex's neck and met him in a deep kiss. She made a mental note to thank Zach for introducing them. She made another one to ask Alex if he and Zach had really met when he'd washed up on the beach, but that could wait.

Claire pulled away and whispered in his ear, "Do you really think you could give me air underwater mouth-to-mouth?"

"Yeah," Alex remarked, confused about the sudden change in activity.

"Well," Claire suggested, "there's something's I'd like to try." She smiled a truly lecherous smile, and Alex soon caught onto the implication, kissing her again and pulling them underwater.

: : :

Claire and Alex  
Primatech Midland  
November 29, 2026

"Howdy, Stranger," Claire greeted, finding Alex setting up in his small office. He'd aged well in the last ten years. He was fit, but still looked perfectly respectable in his cerulean blue suit. Claire hadn't aged, but she was wearing her hair, now dyed coppery red, in a shorter style which complimented her scarlet skirt suit.

"Does everyone here really talk like that? 'Cause if so, I'm asking for another transfer."

Claire chuckled, "So, I see you're setting up in the HR portion of the building. What happened to Mr. Lifeguard Complex? I pegged you as the next agent-for-life."

"Marriage happened. Wives tend to be wary of jobs where you track down super-powered menaces all day."

"No, you do _not_ have to tell me about the craziness that is the female sex." Alex smiled politely, not understanding the joke. Claire continued, "So is that why you transferred here? The better half want a change of scenery? It's the only reason I can think of that you'd move to a location in the desert. In fact, Midland is the only location we have that _isn't_ close to a major water body."

"We divorced," Alex explained, "After six years, she picked up the hobby of throwing things… at me." He held up his hand to show a lack of a wedding ring. "No, I moved here because the Company is funneling a lot of money into the brand new location and I was willing to be a guinea pig in exchange for a promotion and substantial salary increase." He added, "Plus, you're here."

Claire was taken aback. "Alex, we had fun in Barstow, but you know it was just that: fun. I was just trying to capture a little of my lost youth. I'd just spent three years in a deserted church with my uncle and his infant daughter…"

"I know," Alex gracefully cut her off, "I don't have any misconceptions about what it was. It's just good to see you again. I'm not expecting us to get back together or anything," he remarked jokingly, diverting his eyes as he fiddled with some trinkets on his desk. He looked up, "Not that I wouldn't be opposed…"

"Let's start out with 'friends,'" Claire suggested, extending her hand.

"I'd like that," Alex replied, taking her hand, but not shaking it, or letting go.

: : :

Claire and Alex  
Gulf of Mexico  
February 14, 2028

Claire and Alex stood together, looking at the stars, from their private balcony on the cruise ship. Claire, who'd grown out her hair and switched back to blonde, wore her sky blue bikini with a wrap. Alex left his salmon shirt unbuttoned over red board shorts.

He wrapped his arms around her, "Want to go for a swim?"

"No," she replied, "I'm exhausted. Plus, I gorged myself at dinner. You'd be dragging me the whole time."

"One of these days, I'm going to get to the bottom of this steak obsession of yours."

"I'm from Texas. Mystery solved."

"Okay," he replied, letting the matter settle, before offering, "Marry me?"

Claire was silent for a moment before asking, "_What?_"

Alex pulled out a ring box and descended to one knee, "Claire Elizabeth Bennet, will you marry me?"

Claire began to pace across the rather short deck, made shorter with Alex kneeling in the middle of it. "It's only been a year, Alex. I'm willing to write this off as a Valentine's Day spur-of-the-moment thing.

Alex got up from his kneeling position, "I've got a ring."

"There's a jewelry shop _on the boat_."

"I've had this ring for two months."

"Alex, what's this really about?"

"What it's really about? It's about how I really love you."

"I love you, too!" Claire replied, though it came out as an accusation, "But what possessed you to think we were ready for this step? We haven't even _begun_ to discuss these things."

"It's about the shake-up."

"Shake-up? It's a passing of the torch. Company Director's a stressful job and Hanson wants to step down. She's been grooming Matt for almost a year."

"Parkman's getting the job because his security company just acquired another company with a bunch of government contracts. I hear he's taking Pokaski with him to run HR there. That opens up the HRH spot in Hartsdale. Redhouse offered me the job at HQ."

"And, so what, I'm supposed to be the anchor that allows you to get out of the job?"

"I want to take the job. They've got the best department there. I want to take you with me."

"I can't leave Hannah."

"She's fifteen. I know you love her—I love her, too—and I think it's admirable how you stepped in to be her surrogate mom, but I think she can handle having you not living in the same house as her. You're only a teleport away."

"I just… can't."

"Then ask Peter and Hannah to come with us. It'd be going home for Peter."

"But that's depriving my mom of _three_ employees all at once. I can't do that to her. It's hard enough recruiting people to middle-of-nowhere Texas."

"Claire, I'm trying to meet you halfway here. Can you for once in your life make a decision that's about _you_?"

Claire didn't respond for the longest time. "What's happening here?" Claire asked, her eyes watering.

His eyes wet, too, Alex answered, "I'm not sure."

: : :

Alex and Claire  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 26, 2029

"I don't blame you," Alex noted.

"You never did," Claire deflected.

: : :

Mila and Daniella  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 26, 2029

"You know, as much as I love the kids, the occasional half-day is nice," Mila remarked to Daniella, after escaping from a long, suffocating hug.

"How much longer do you get to be a teacher's aide at Saint Al's?" Daniella asked, bouncing down the hallway.

"Another year after this. Not that I don't love giving the children of overprotective Catholic mothers a head start in kindergarten, but it seems like I'm there all the time. And Reverend D's really nice; he's always asking about my family and how my college classes are going. Do you think I'm crazy for doing this?"

"You want to be a teacher," Daniella stated matter-of-factly, taking hold of Mila's wrists, "and not only will you be spectacular at it, you'll feel fulfilled."

"It's quite convenient having your best friend able to read the deepest depths of your heart and mind."

"I'm not telling you anything you don't know."

"Then, tell me something I don't."

"Both Andrew and Noah have strong romantic feelings for me."

"Yeah, I _do_ know that. Who can blame them, hot thing like you?"

"I had a session with Andrew today. He wants…" Hand gesture.

"Sex?"

"No. Well, yes. But he wants monogamy. And, it's not like I mean to string them along. I still just don't get the kind of love you can reserve for one person. What's that thing I have called?"

Mila searched her brain. "Polyamory?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

"_Chica_, you have omniamory."

"Huh, I guess that's right." She thought for a moment, "People in love; they never feel the same as each other. It's always a different combination. For some, it's mostly trust. Others, a lot of the usual friendship stuff. I've seen plenty with a good heaping of lust thrown in the mix. I don't get it."

"Dani, you'll know it when you feel it. You'll just _look_ at that person and you'll get so jealous for no reason." Mila's eyes left Daniella's. "You'll be selfish—yes, even you," she glanced again at her restlessly swaying friend. "Wanting them to be happy? Big pile of crap. You'll only be happy if _you're_ the one making them happy. You'll walk away and every step will hurt. I know you feel intimately close to everyone when you see them, but the person you're in love with will just want to make you blather like an idiot. When you're scared, or happy, or just bored, they'll be the first person that pops in your head. And they won't leave." She stood there for a minute, just pondering an unseen face.

"Huh," Daniella replied, as if she understood completely. She then remained quiet for the longest time, as if she didn't.

: : :

Savannah and Molly  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 26, 2029

Savannah walked into Molly's office to drop off her mail.

Not looking up from her computer, Molly remarked, "When I have visitors, Natalia usually alerts me that they're here to see me. That's because people usually check in with her first. It's how I know I'm not being attacked."

"You didn't seem too worried about me," Savannah noted.

"Well, I can keep track of my employees pretty well." One of Molly's wall monitors indicated the location of all Primatech employees. Savannah silently wondered if Molly ever needed to look at it.

"What's your deal with Micah?"

Molly stopped typing. "My 'deal'? Micah and I are colleagues. He is instrumental in keeping all our technical needs met. He's very talented, and I couldn't do my job without him."

"That's it?"

"Well, I just dumbly assumed since we're at work, you were asking about our professional relationship. Are you curious about our personal relationship?"

"Ooh, _personal_ relationship," Savannah teased.

"Micah and I are good friends. I've known him for well over twenty years. We came into our powers at the same time. We've witness many monumental events together. The Kirby Plaza fight between Peter and Sylar. The Epidemic. The Odessa Disaster. The Brodsky Conspiracy. The Oregon Flood. We're very close."

Savannah seemed disappointed.

"Look, if you're looking for juicy gossip, it's not us. Not all stories ending with true love's kiss between the hero and heroine."

"I think he digs you," Savannah suggested, none too sincerely.

"Micah Sanders developed a crush on me when he was about fifteen. I wasn't interested then."

"Then? What about now?" She grinned excitedly.

"Neutral," Molly finally decided, "As I've grown, I've come to recognize that Micah would be an excellent romantic partner."

"Were you deprived of romantic comedies as a child?"

"I wouldn't mind trying it out with Micah, but I simply don't care enough to make the first step. And since I pushed him away, he thinks a line is drawn. If we were to never hook up, I wouldn't regret it in the least."

"Well, it's just not my week. I thought I'd sown some seeds with Claire and Alex, but I guess I've lost my touch."

: : :

Claire and Alex  
Alex's Apartment  
White Plains, New York  
March 26, 2029

Claire lay nude on top of Alex's bare chest in his bed.

"You do realize that this is probably a terrible idea," Claire mentioned.

"I'll admit it's a not-unlikely possibility. On the other hand..."

"I don't want to hear about the other hand," Claire refused.

"Besides the whole nasty breakup, really what's keeping us from picking up where we left off?"

"The elephant in the room."

"The sparkly one? In the little blue case?"

"That's the one. Hannah..."

"Hannah's sixteen. She's graduated from college; she wanders the halls of the Company like she owns the place. She's not an excuse anymore."

"I _know_," Claire remarked, as if surprised by the fact herself, "Don't you at least think that starting six days after I arrive is probably a bad idea?"

"Yes," he replied plainly.

"Wow. Didn't expect that response."

"Well, I'm not a fool. Or at least I'm slightly less of a fool that I was last year. That's why I know you're not staying."

"No, but I don't want you to read too deeply into it."

"Reading too deeply into you would drive a man mad."

: : :

Adam Monroe  
Primatech Headquarters Front Lobby  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 27, 2029

The front receptionist was unfamiliar. Granted, he would have been a small boy the last time Adam set foot on Company property. Adam paid him no heed; _she_ was here and nothing was going to stop him from getting to her.

: : :

A/N: I wouldn't classify myself as an Alex/Claire shipper, but I wanted a love interest for her and the story just came together. I especially don't mean to ignore Claire's lesbian storyline from Volume Five, but I try to keep my series at least one volume behind in terms of adding characters, because I want time to process them and create my own interpretation of them. So, Gretchen will have to wait and it's not like I won't have time in the future to explore Claire's bisexuality.

So, this will definitely be at least thirteen chapters. I decided to discard my previous plan, which was to incorporate the totality of the Other Side Timeline into Chapter 10, and make Volume Three the continuation of Progeny. Instead, I'm going with my original plan, which is to make the Other Side Timeline into a short Volume Three, and continue with this timeline in Volume Four. Since I already have a lot of material for the Other Side, you'll be getting the next volume sooner, giving me time to plan Volume Four, _and_ more material as I'll be writing both as volumes.

Started 2/15/2010. Finished 3/23/2010.


	10. Sensing the Storm

Progeny, Chapter 10  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action/Drama  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summary: Adam Monroe arrives at the Company. Monica comes to New York on a personal errand. Claire and Peter learn something new about the Sixers.  
Spoilers: "I Am Become Death" and the Exposed Future. This far in, you should know where we're at.

A/N: This is the last chapter before the three-part finale. Sorry for the wait, but if there was any chapter that had to be meticulously crafted, it was this one.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… Adam Monroe, straight from the Other Side, makes his way to Primatech. Mohinder brings Shanti back to New York and introduces her to his daughter. The Project Six team strategizes. Andrew has a tense counseling session with Daniella. Claire and Alex remember happier times. Mila and Daniella enjoy each other's company.

: : :

Chapter 10: Sensing the Storm

_Mankind has always dreamt of controlling the weather. It has dreamt of merely **predicting** the weather with some level of accuracy. Through decades of tireless research and advancing technology, we have become rather good at it. By analyzing the movements of warm and cold fronts, we can detect coming storms, even tornados and hurricanes. But one of our most faithful instruments is one that was designed more than 400 years ago: the barometer. Even before that, humanity could always foretell the tempests by observing the erratic behavior of their animals and feeling the pain in their arthritic knees. As if by magic, we feel it coming._

: : :

Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 27, 2029

Throughout the building, the security alarms blared. All of the thousands of monitors lining the hallways and office walls showed a mug shot of Adam Monroe, warning all the occupants of the threat he posed.

In his office, Mohinder was shuffling his sister Shanti into the back room, pushing his ID badge into her hand. He told her urgently, "This has access to almost all the rooms in here. If anyone breaks in, I want you to find your way out. The computers will all have maps with exit routes."

"Mohinder, really, this isn't necessary."

But a banging on this office door confirmed Mohinder's fears as he shoved his sister through the door, yelling, "I can't lose you again, _Akkaa_." He kissed her on the cheek and pushed her out of the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

Monroe's voice could be heard through the door, screaming, "I know she's in there, Suresh!" The next pound on the door splintered the wood composite near the hinges.

: : :

Monica Dawson  
LaGuardia-Petrelli Airport  
New York, New York

A large airliner touched down on Runway T9. In his business class sat Monica Dawson, who turned on her phone and was greeted with a text message from an unlisted number.

"Well, I certainly chose an interesting day to visit," she muttered to herself as she scanned the message.

: : :

Agent Arrangement  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York

Barbara locked down the Agent Arrangement office and pulled a large pistol from her desk, which she loaded with a cartridge.

"Well, Evie," she said to herself, as he blond coworker was not in the room, "you picked a good day to play hooky."

Aiming her gun at the door, she used her free hand to tap on her computer and check Evie's access card log and saw no entries for that day. She then pulled up her telephone program and dialed Evie's mobile phone number, but it rang half a dozen times before jumping to voice mail.

: : :

Mohinder Suresh  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York

Mohinder's door came crashing in, the man once known as Adam Monroe with it. He pulled himself up, popped his shoulder back in, and walked up to Mohinder's desk.

"I'm warning you, Monroe, you'll find I have a few tricks up my sleeve." With that, he leapt up onto his desk with the strength and agility of a grasshopper.

"This is new," the intruder remarked, almost casually, "So I'm guessing the Company's changed a little bit in the last twenty years."

"It certainly has. We've evolved past all that."

"So, what have you done with Shanti?"

"I won't let you hurt her. I'll hold you off." For a moment, Adam could have sworn the man's eyes glowed red.

As he surreptitiously scanned the room, he commented sympathetically, "My God, Mohinder, it's terrible to see you like this. I know what an ordeal you went through, but… this is tragic. "

"You have ten seconds to leave this room. I know you can probably heal from whatever I throw at you, but I think you won't find it to be a fun experience. You're down to seven seconds… six… five… four… three… two…" Mohinder was then cut off when he heard his back door unlock.

"Colin!" Shanti cried as she ran back into the room, "I thought I heard your voice!" She ran into Adam's arms and kissed him hard on the lips.

Mohinder stood dumbfounded, still perched on his desk.

Slipping her hand into Monroe's, she turned back and noted patronizingly, "_Tampi_, you look quite silly."

Mohinder smoothly leapt off his desk. "You know Adam Monroe?"

The man Shanti called Colin laughed, "I haven't used that name since the 1970s."

"He goes by Colin now. Colin Kane."

Mohinder's head twitched, just a bit. "Wait. Colin, as in the man who saved you?"

"With his blood. He injected me and…"

"You got better," Mohinder realized, "Yes, it all makes perfect sense now. When the Shanti virus got out, the only way I could create an antidote was to mix my own blood and the blood of a regenerator. So, this is Colin, your…"

"Husband, yes."

In Hindi, Mohinder stated under his voice, "And you harass me for marrying a _gora_?"

Colin warned, in perfect Tamil, "I've been married to a Chennaiite for ten years, _mate_; I do speak the language." He said "mate" in his native tongue, though.

"Well, you did say you married an older man," Mohinder remarked, "Wait, _ten_ years? You've been married for _ten _years?"

Shanti blushed. "There was no reason to wait. I'd been in love with him since I was a little girl."

"Your sister blossomed into a beautiful woman, Mohinder. A loving and caring one, too. She stole my heart."

Mohinder relaxed. "I'm sorry for alarming you, _akkaa_, but this man in my world is very dangerous."

"Oh, he's still dangerous," Shanti remarked, half-seriously, half-flirtatiously.

Colin stated honestly, "I don't lie about my past. I've done some bad things. But, I assure you, I'm not a villain."

: : :

Monica and Sparrow  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 27, 2029

"Welcome, Monica, we're delighted you came to visit," Sparrow welcomed her fellow director.

"Well, it's not totally a vacation. I came to retrieve Damon."

As the two walked the halls of Primatech Hartsdale, Monica commented, "Your brother? I didn't know he was here."

Monica sighed. "About two weeks ago, the little leech called me and asked to borrow some money. He said he wanted to visit some friends in New York. I'd never heard of any friends in the City, but I'm not his mother, so I bought him the ticket. He called me to let me know he'd made it to his hotel and that's the last I heard from him. I'm getting worried, so I thought I'd have Molly look him up so I can drag his scrawny neck back to New Orleans."

Sparrow smiled at the sentiment. "Yes, I've two younger sisters." As they turned to corner to Sparrow's office, she asked politely, "So, you're doing a splendid job running New Orleans. Who'd you leave in your stead?"

"Lyle. He's ecstatic. He's been begging me for a chance to run the place for years."

"You sound like Carlson. 'You can have the reins when you tear them from my cold dead hands.'"

"I'm almost, I'll admit. But, you have to understand, I'm responsible for cities like New Orleans, Miami, Key West, Jamaica. I've seen riots break out _spontaneously_… at _wakes_. There's no other way to run my region except with an iron fist."

"I hear you. You should try running the Northeast sometime." They entered Sparrow's office. "So, Molly's pretty tied up with Project Six, but I'm sure she can squeeze in a moment to do a search. While you're waiting, though, feel free to use any of the Company's resources."

: : :

Gabriel and Noah  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York

Gabriel ended the call on his mobile phone. "Your mother must have fried another phone."

"Didn't we spend like hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a phone that was shock-proof for her?"

"Yes, and what do you think your mother did?"

"Take it as a challenge," Noah concluded.

Gabriel nodded. And then fell down due to a fatal amount of electricity flowing through his body, which continued for a little over thirty seconds. As his body transformed from crispy lump of carbon to human form, he greeted to the grinning blond face now staring at him from above, "Hi, Firefly."

"Hey, Mom," Noah greeted, hugging her and laying a kiss on her cheek.

"Hi, Sweetie," she replied, tapping his nose while sparking her finger.

From the ground, Gabriel asked, "So, let me guess, you turned your phone into ash?"

"Nope," she sing-sang, holding up a perfectly good touch-screen mobile phone, "at least not yet," sending a visible current through the phone, which remarkably held up to the abuse. "I just wanted to surprise you."

"How's this for a surprise?" Gabriel swiftly leapt up, grabbed Elle by the rump, and pressed her against the nearby wall, laying an intense kiss on her.

After several seconds of smooching, Elle pulled away, "My favorite kind of surprise," she remarked, but looked up to see her son glaring at her. "But not in front of the boy," she warned, wetting her finger in her mouth and sticking it into her husband's ear and sparking it.

As Gabriel pulled away, rubbing his ringing ear, he suggested obviously, "Let's find something to do together, then, shall we?" He wrapped his arm around his short wife and Noah followed suit.

With her boys towering above her, Elle led the way, "So, it's been over a year that I've been criminally deprived of New York-style pizza. Let's make Momma happy."

"So, who'd you leave in charge, Dear? Or are we going to back and find all the doors unlocked and the lights on?"

"Graffiti in the bullpen; raccoons in the storage lockers," Noah added.

"Very funny," Elle defended herself, "I called up Hanson. She was there in fifteen minutes. And I know it takes at least twenty-five from her house. Granted, I'm never getting my office key back."

"I think you will," Noah suggested.

Elle grinned sinisterly. "I think I _will_."

As the trio roamed the halls, they ran into Colin and Shanti. Both groups stopped dead in their tracks, staring at one another with blank expressions on their faces.

"So," Colin remarked, breaking the silence, by addressing Gabriel, "I've heard that you're not evil."

"I heard the same thing about you," Gabriel remarked. He nodded for a full ten seconds before breaking the silence with, "Married I see."

Shanti gave a little half-wave and mustered up an awkward "Hi!"

"And yourself," Colin observed after a five-second pause.

Another five seconds passed of stillness and quiet. Gabriel tapped Elle's shoulder.

"Screw you, Alpha Wolf. I'm not your little lapdog to impress rivals. Why don't you two just pee on various objects to mark your territory?" Completely forgetting about Colin and Shanti's presence, turned around and mentioned, without a hint of guilt, "Oh, by the way, I lost Mr. Muggles."

"You threw him off the roof of the office building again, didn't you?" Noah predicted immediately.

"Maybe…"

"You're bizarre, Mother."

: : :

Primatech Solutions Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 28, 2029

Micah knocked on the door to Peter and Claire's office, where the two were working diligently on paperwork.

"Hey, that sync problem you had me working on, Claire? I think it just opened a big can of worms."

Peter and Claire looked up, mildly curious.

Micah continued, "And by 'worms,' I mean security clearance violations, data protocols breakdowns, top secret information declassification…" His voice grew steadily more frantic with each example. He handed Claire a report on e-paper in a crystal blue folder. Claire read the file with Peter peeking over her shoulder. Claire's mild curiosity turned to seething anger and Peter's to aghast disbelief.

Two minutes later, on another wing of the building, Sparrow was playing Hearts on her computer when Claire barged in, Natalia in tow, desperately trying to apologize to Sparrow, Peter behind them, trying to apologize to Natalia. Micah soon followed in behind the group, sheepishly, positioning himself in the corner and looking very much like he wished his power were invisibility.

"What is this?!" Claire asked, throwing the blue file folder on Sparrow's desk.

As she scanned through the file, her eyes darkened, zeroing in on Micah in a split second. With all the caged wrath of a draconian headmistress, she slowly mused, "Micah, I thought… I had you put special data blocks _things_ on this information."

Natalia, without a word, dismissed herself.

Micah inhaled a very deep breath. "Well, I did. I put blocks on the _files_. The data inside the files is just sitting on our local servers." He took another long moment to choose his words, "The thing about 'special' file locks is that I created from scratch and they don't conform to our server software. There was a syncing issue brought to me by Claire." His hand gestured toward the blonde, but Sparrow's eyes didn't falter. "…and when I ran some bots to investigate the syncing issue, it showed me the problem data, which of course, logically, is the stuff not everyone—myself included in that particular group— was supposed to see. So, uh, sorry?"

"Sparrow, what the hell?" Claire demanded, sparing Micah.

Sparrow didn't answer immediately, just tapped her monitor a few times and spoke into it, "Molly, it's Sparrow. You'd better hightail it up here."

"I've got Monica Dawson coming to see me in five minutes," Molly's voice came through Sparrow's speakers.

"She can wait fifteen minutes." Sparrow looked up, adding, "Better make it forty-five."

Once Molly was in the room, Sparrow explained diplomatically, "So, Peter, Claire, as you've discovered, the Sixers aren't as secret as I first led you to believe."

"'Sixers'?" Micah noted, "What do you mean 'Sixer'? These files…" he looked at a sheet of paper in his hand, "Appleby… Ghali… Seuss… They're 2's and 3's."

"Molly, would you mind debriefing Mr. Sanders?"

Molly nodded and tilted her head to Micah, gesturing him out of the room, where the air seemed much cooler.

Sparrow looked up at Peter and Claire, and stood up. "I guess I should start at the beginning. First, the unabridged Heather Appleby. Ms. Appleby first came to our attention about four months ago…"

: : :

138th Street  
New York, New York  
November 21, 2028

The corner was lit by the revolving blue and red lights of the police cars parked in front of the ambulance. An elegant dark-haired woman in her 40s in a deep purple blouse-and-skirt ensemble sat on the sidewalk, wrapped in a blanket and shivering.

A police officer knelt beside her. "Mrs. Appleby, how are you doing?"

"_Ms._ Appleby," she corrected. Taking a brave breath, she added, "I'm neither old enough nor married enough for you to call me that."

"My apologies, ma'am."

"No, no, no," Appleby modestly waved it off, "I'm just teasing." She retreated into her mind again, staring into space.

"Ms. Appleby," the police officer repeated, laying just the tips of his fingers on her arm, "could we go over what happened on more time; I'm sorry," he added quickly.

Not looking up, Appleby narrated, "I was looking for this robot toy thing. Hooks into your computer and talks and dances and whatnot. It's the big Christmas item. They talk about it on the news."

"I know it," the cop remarked, "Both my kids want one."

"Anyway, I'm not familiar with this side of town, but I was being cautious. In the store, out of the store, to the taxi, and back home." She gestured as she continued the story. "But I got turned around and ended up on 7th Avenue. I hadn't gone one block when this man… this _monster_ with a knife comes at me. I jump back and he swipes and I…" She tried to lift her arm to show the cut but discovered that the arm was already being held up and bandaged by a paramedic.

"Go on," the officer urged.

"I screamed and next thing I know, he's on the ground and there's blood everywhere…" She began to hyperventilate and the paramedic told her to breathe slowly. She looked over to where a figure lay under a white sheet.

"Did you have any weapons?"

"I have some pepper spray in my purse, but I didn't even think to pull it out. I-I have no idea how this happened."

The officer nodded as if he understood but his brow furrowed as if he didn't.

"Where's Dempsey?" Appleby suddenly asked.

A female paramedic brought a dark-haired, almond-eyed boy of ten to Appleby. He cried out for his mother and hugged her tightly. She soothed him, repeatedly saying, "I'm okay, Sweetie; are you okay, Baby?"

Appleby began to stare into space again. So did Dempsey, the police officer, and the paramedic. In fact, everyone in the vicinity simply slumped over where they were standing and stared into space, except for a man and a woman on the perimeter.

The man was tall and blond; the woman was lean, dark-skinned, and short-haired. Both wore two-piece suits. "Good job, Kader," the man noted.

"It's what I do, Covington. You take the lady; I'll take the boy. Don't let me catch you doing anything untoward to her, though."

He held up his hand. "On my mother's grave."

The pair extracted Heather and Dempsey Appleby and drove off with them, still dazed, in the back seat of their car.

: : :

Sparrow, Peter, and Claire  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 28, 2029

"We had her in _custody_?" Claire asked, "How did she escape?"

"She didn't escape," Sparrow replied, "we brought her here to _help_ her. She was a Level 2 when we brought her in: dangerous ability, no antisocial tendencies. She was here for five days, learning to control her ability."

"We trained her?"

"Not training. We taught her to _suppress_ her ability, to limit the damage she inflicted on people. When we let her go, she was fine. Better than fine. She was comfortable with her ability."

"She has a _child_? Why didn't we hear about this?" Peter asked.

"It wasn't relevant. She's only now dangerous. We'll deal with the boy when we get a chance."

"Problem with that idea, Sparrow," Micah noted from the doorway, holding up his phone. He tapped the screen and information appeared on one of Sparrow's monitors. "Long story short, I get a feed of news articles every day. I won't go into the technical details, but I have a web crawler that searches for ones relevant to our interests: names in our databases, strange unexplained occurrences. Apparently, this item was a little too low on the queue to catch my attention." The article was an obituary for Dempsey Appleby, right below an article about the police searching for Heather for child endangerment and manslaughter.

"She _killed_ him?" Claire remarked in shock, "I'm going to be sick."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," Micah replied, "If you read the article, you get a different take on the fact than the reporter did. 'Mugger slashed up by Upper East Side socialite. Christmas Day, boy falls off bike; boy taken to hospital where a roomful of surgeons are later found stabbed to death; mother takes critically injured boy home where he dies three days later of sepsis, and two cops die when a squad comes to investigate.' You see how we understand the story differently than others would."

Peter skimmed the article, "Compound fracture of the tibia; that's a nasty injury. And not a pretty one. A bunch of doctors poking and prodding, _hurting_ the kid to help him. You can bet Mom's Zen techniques go out the window and she shifts her deflection onto the doctors."

"I may not have kids, but I had an overprotective mother," Micah noted.

"When you're a parent, when your kid hurts, you hurt," Peter finished. Claire nodded in agreement.

Sparrow concluded, "When, now we all have the whole story. And as tragic as it is, don't let this divert us from the cause."

"No, it doesn't change anything. Whatever her motives may be, Appleby's actions are inexcusable. Don't think I'm still not a little pissed about your subterfuge, Sparrow. What else are you not telling us?"

Sparrow got up from her chair, wiped off Micah's articles from the monitor and pulled up a file. "Our region's radar wasn't the first one that Ghali popped up on. In fact, we've been looking for him for over a year…"

: : :

Lyon, France  
February 14, 2028

The local _police_ examined the corpse in the bed of the small apartment. She was once a beautiful 20-something but now her skin had a sweaty, sickly pallor.

Claude Rains entered in a suit and overcoat. To the officer who appeared in charge, he introduced himself as, "Thomas Baker, Interpol… _Division de Bioterrorisme_," he managed in French.

The captain sent him a dirty look and noted rapidly, in French, "_Bioterrorisme_? It's one girl."

In passable French, Claude replied, "And that will be the first line of my report." The captain eased visibly and Claude added, "Are you sure it's not… testing of weapons?"

"It's a normal apartment," the captain answered, a bit slower, "We haven't found a laboratory."

Claude nodded. Daphne Parkman suddenly appeared by his side.

The captain visibly leapt when he noticed Daphne

"Daphné Moulin-Ruisseau," Daphne introduced herself.

"A colleague of mine," Claude explained, "she's very…" He turned to Daphne and said in English, "sneaky?"

"_Furtif_," Daphne translated for the captain.

Claude pulled Daphne aside, and switching back to English, remarked, "Thanks for coming by. My French is a little rusty and I didn't want to make a… well, how do you say faux pas in French?"

"_Faux pas_," Daphne noted glibly. The pair thought they heard the captain chuckle, so they lowered their voices further. "No big deal. It was just a few milliseconds out of my way. _Minutes, je veux dire_," she added. The captain wandered off as if to examine scene further.

"Give me a rundown of what's happening."

Daphne nodded and made her way over to where the crime scene technicians were processing, asking them questions.

"The girl's name is Émilie Lafaux, age 25. She's a student at l'Université de Lyon. She's engaged to a man named Joseph Ghali, some rich kid. His dad's a…"

"Egyptian media mogul. The Ghalis have been on our radar for some time. Joseph's grandfather was a… _client_," Claude inflected the last word into French and the captain turned his head as if in thought.

"Are you saying you think Ghali did this on purpose?"

"His father never manifested and as far as we know Joseph hasn't either. Did the squints identify the disease?"

"Not even close. It's like nothing they've seen."

"Then Ghali likely just manifested. What would you do if your wife-to-be suddenly died in front of you?"

"Freak out, I suppose," Daphne answered.

"Poor kid. Speaking of which, we're not in danger here?"

"No, whatever virus did this has a short incubation period. It doesn't last long in a dead body. How do you want to proceed?"

"Rich kid with plentiful funds and passport easily accessible? We chase the bodies. Don't worry; Level 2's are the easiest to track down. What about the local blue? Or teal should I say?" he remarked, eyeing the officer's uniforms.

"I'm married to a former cop; after forty-eight hours of a head-scratcher like this, they'll be thanking Interpol for taking it off their hands."

: : :

Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 28, 2029

"We've been on his tail for a year?"

"Hardly," Sparrow replied, "there was nothing until a few months ago. Isolated incidents of COF. We looked into it, but he got away too easily. We had Matt take a look at it and he told us it read like gang activity. It was preplanned and he had help. Then the 138th Street Massacre happened and Project Six opened."

"What about the other two?"Peter asked.

"Nothing," Sparrow noted, "you have everything we have on Seuss and Chow."

"Well," Molly remarked, "there actually is a little more history that none of us knew. Micah?"

Micah pulled up a photograph of several soldiers in fatigues, lined up for a group shot. One of them was noticeably Piper Johanssen.

"That photograph is hanging in Piper's office. I've seen it a dozen times," Sparrow remarked.

Micah tapped the screen, causing metadata to appear. Floating boxes appeared above each face with their code names, among them, Piper "Taffy" Johanssen and Greg "Boomaroo" Seuss.

No one said anything as they peered closer at the familiar face of the man standing in the very middle of the photograph.

Micah continued his presentation, "As you know, the Antidote slowly worked itself out of Naturals' bodies, allowing them to manifest later on. Well, Nathan restarted the program in secret." A memo labeled "TOP SECRET" appeared. "Seuss was one of Arthur's men, but he swore allegiance to the Legion, so he was reinjected." A form titled "AUTHORIZATION FOR INJECTION" appeared, signed by the late President. "He served well and was given an honorable discharge." Another governmental form appeared on screen. "…and a Distinguished Service Medal." An image of the medal and a photograph of the awards ceremony appeared on screen.

"Why was I not made aware of this?" Sparrow accused, "And why were you?"

"Sparrow, it's in your files."

"I have _a lot_ of files."

"As to why I knew, you're not the first person to ask me to create special locks on files."

Claire sat down, muttering with a mix of emotions, "Well, _this_ has been an informative day."

Peter prompted, "So, do we get to hear about Wilson Chow next?"

Micah explained, "Actually, I have nothing revealing on him. He's lived a pretty normal life. A rather impoverished life, but a typical life all the same."

"If there were anything else to tell you about him, I would," Sparrow promised, "Some people just don't have exciting lives as we do."

: : :

Monica and Molly  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 29, 2029

"I'm so sorry I couldn't help you sooner," apologized Molly.

Monica brushed it off, "It's okay. Damon may get himself into a lot of scrapes, but he's too incompetent to get himself into real trouble. Here, I brought a picture."

Molly nodded and took it, "Thanks, that'll help. Wow, he's grown."

"He _aged_."

Molly closed her eyes and focused. After only a few moments, she came out of her trance, looking rather perplexed.

"What's wrong? Did you find him?"

"No, I can't get a good signal."

"I didn't realize it was like a mobile phone."

"More than you'd think."

"Wait, if you can't find him, are you saying he's… dead?" Monica asked incredulously.

"No," Molly noted firmly, "if he were dead, I'd see nothing. He was just weak."

"So he's sick… or hurt?" Monica asked, with growing concern.

"It's possible, but I wouldn't leap to that conclusion immediately. There are a lot of reasons why I wouldn't be able to pin someone down. I mean, for example, people who are asleep give off slightly weaker signals. People who are lost are harder to zero in on. Specials with mental abilities can usually block me. And I've even discovered that people who just don't want to be found can make my clairvoyance fuzzy. We'll try again later; I'm sure everything's fine. You should track down Micah. He's pretty good with Sherlocking people down."

"I'll try that. Thanks," Monica replied, not seeming quite comforted.

: : :

Noah Gray  
Research Department  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 30, 2029; 1:15 AM

Noah crept through Mohinder's laboratory until he reached a set of pathogen containment containers against the back wall. He held up a lanyard to a monitor above the containers. The credentials for his mother, a regional director, appeared, disabling the security.

Ignoring the warning claiming the need for a Level A hazmat suit, he pulled out the cartridge of the leftmost container, peering through the tempered glass at an inconspicuous cloudy liquid.

: : :

Monica Dawson  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 30, 2029

Monica sat at a desk, entering data into a program. The screen was filled with a floating 3-dimentional tree graph composed of image- and text-rich nodes connected by labeled bars. The right side of the screen displayed a miscellanea of figures that didn't seem to impress Monica.

Monica pulled the last item from her pile of papers and receipts, an e-sheet with only a few lines of information: a partial address; which she entered dutifully.

The screen suddenly awoke with activity. The nodes rushed by the screen, new lines appearing in a flurry. A popup screen appeared above the window, informing Monica that there was an extremely high probability that a significant corpus of relevant information had been assembled. It listed below a dozen figures, among them _3,441 new connections_ and _42 related case files_. It then listed a link for a central figure, which Monica clicked, pulling up a case file.

Monica got up from her chair and ran out of the room.

: : :

Barbara Zimmerman  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 30, 2029

Barbara walked into Molly's office. "Molly, I need a favor."

"Who?" Molly asked without looking up.

"Evie. She hasn't showed up in three days. I can't get a hold of her."

Molly chuckled, "She's young."

"She's mature. She's responsible. I know her. Something's wrong. I've exhausted all my resources. I just need you to—"

Molly held her hand up to stop Barbara. She looked up to answer her but her eyes caught the monitor on the back wall of her office, featuring four red folders, all labeled "6" with a photograph attached to each. "Oh, God," she muttered. She leapt up from her chair. She nearly fell over and had to brace herself on her desk.

"It's happening."

: : :

A/N: So, I wanted to give you a timeline for the rest of the series. The next three chapters will be the finale. The very exciting Chapter 11 will be posted before May 23. I have a job as a camp counselor during the summer, so posts will be infrequent if nonexistent for the following two months. But you can expect me to finish up over the summer.

Started 3/14/2010. Finished 5/1/2010.


	11. The Great Attractor

Progeny, Chapter 11  
by Creedog VanDrey

Category: _Heroes  
_Genre: Action/Drama  
Rating: T  
Language: English  
Summary: The Sixers make their move. Both Monica and Hannah uncover life-changing secrets.  
Spoilers: "I Am Become Death" and the Exposed Future. This far in, you should know where we're at.

A/N: So, despite what you may think, or what FFN will tell you, or even the note at the bottom of the page, it _has not_ been three months since I posted the last chapter. No, sir. It's just a… figment of your imagination. Combined with… poor math skills. Yep, that was it was. Oh, and did I mention time dilation? That, too.

In the last chapter of _The World Entire: Progeny_… Adam storms Primatech, but he's not as villainous as he seems. In fact, he's Mohinder's brother-in-law. Monica comes for a visit, and to retrieve her wayward brother. Elle visits her men. Micah uncovers secrets about the Sixers' pasts that anger Peter and Claire. Barbara fears Evie's absence isn't an unplanned vacation, and Molly can't find her, but does realize that something bad is happening.

: : :

Chapter 11: The Great Attractor

_A Prussian astronomer watches the sun rise and fall. A German math teacher draws spheres inside of geometric figures. An apple falls from a tree onto the head of English academic. A German professor imagines riding on a beam of light. It seems like there is one topic of study which draws in the heavy thinkers like gravity: gravity. The sheer notion that every object, every __**atom**__ in our universe is drawn towards __**every other**__ atom, is staggering. We cannot escape the reality that there is no buffering ourselves from the rest of the world. Or that the world cannot buffer itself from us. Some of us are small objects, orbiting larger objects. Some of us are those larger objects, great attractors that shape the world around us in awe-inspiring and chaotic ways. Some of us are like binary stars, caught in a cosmological dance with those that we cannot escape. One day, perhaps, science will arrive at a Theory of Everything, which will define how the entire universe works, no matter the scale. We have to look no further than our own lives to believe this true. _

: : :

Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 31, 2029

Molly picked herself up off the floor. Monica helped Molly get situated in the chair. She then proceeded to hold her badge to Molly's computer, allowing her to call in Peter and Claire from the Medical department, who moments later rushed in. Claire immediately took Molly's wrist to measure her pulse. Peter took hold of her chin and examined her eyes.

"Peter, Claire, while I appreciate your sentiment, I can assure you I'm fine."

Peter ignored her deflection, "Did you have lunch today? Any recent weight loss?"

"I wish," Molly replied, "And I did eat lunch—chicken salad—thank you very much. I just…" Her eyes turned to the monitor on the back wall. Peter and Claire followed them before Molly could avert her gaze. They noticed the Project 6 directory open.

"It's the Sixers," Peter noted as a dreaded certainly rather than a question.

Claire leapt up resolutely. "Have you contacted Gabriel and Noah yet?"

"No, I…" Molly tried to answer.

Peter asked, "Where are they?"

"Listen…"

Peter persisted, his voice filling with worry, "Molly, you're not acting like yourself. I'm expecting frontline general. Is it the Sixers or isn't it?"

Molly remained silent.

Peter was at the monitor, linking into the communication program, and alerting Gabriel and Noah of the Sixer Alert.

Claire and Peter walked out the door, leading Molly to chase them. She called out forcefully, "Wait just a second. I'm the Sixer Team lead, and I haven't given the order to go in."

Peter, incredulous, remarked, "Molly, I'm confused. This is what we've been planning for, right? It's the big fight with the Sixers? Lives in danger?"

"Yes, but…"

Claire jerked her head in Molly's direction, "How can there be a 'but'? Where are they?" Molly didn't reply immediately. "Molly," Claire pressed.

"Madison Square Garden."

It was then that Gabriel and Noah, who just met up with them in the hall, stopped dead.

"What is it?" Peter asked his brother.

"There's a Rangers game tonight. The place will be packed," remarked Noah.

"This changes things," Gabriel explained, walking again, with Claire, Peter, and Noah following him, with Molly again racing to catch up, "we were working around the scenario that it would be a public place with a lot of people, but a stadium is a contingency we didn't plan on. We weren't worried about the difficulty in containing COF because it's short-range. These people will be jam-packed in an area with relatively few exits."

"Hold up!" Molly declared, "we're not going in."

Peter was aghast, "We have to."

"The team's not ready."

"We've been preparing."

At this point, they reached the locker room. The four agents moved to each corner of the room and began to undress.

"_You guys_ have been preparing. You think you're it? You think that I'd sent _four_ Specials—admittedly four extremely powerful ones—in alone? You were the _front line_. There needs to be at least one more team going in behind you." At this point, seeing her agents weren't bothering with modesty, she spun around.

"Another team? No one but us can survive COF," Claire noted.

Molly turned her head to reply. "We were working on containment suits. And long-range weapons. I hope I'm not disappointing anyone, but you four are the tip of the iceberg that is Project Six. We are not ready." She then caught more than she wanted to see of Noah, so she turned back around and faced the door.

"We have to be," Gabriel remarked, fully suited.

Molly sighed in agreement, "Alright, alright. But let's not forget that this is _my_ op. The four of you have a history of going into situations half-cocked." Molly pulled out her phone, "First thing, I'm going to get police and fire on this."

"We can't let them in," Claire pointed out.

Without missing a beat, Molly agreed, "And we won't. It was always in the battle plan to have them seal and man the exits. We'll give 'em some phony story about hazard chemicals. Now, let's work on your entry." Pulling the team outside of the locker room, Molly placed her badge in front of a monitor and dialed for Agent Arrangement. "Barbara, you're gonna have to put the search for Evie on hold. We need identities to get a team of four in. It's Project Six."

On screen, Barbara nodded and pressed a button on a second monitor, sending four ID images on screen. Molly reviewed them, "Peter, Claire, you'll be taking AMB1." Peter and Claire nodded severely. "Gabriel, Noah, POL1." Gabriel let a smile out, but Noah remained as severe as his uncle and cousin. "Misha will get you there before the real entourage. Suit up. You've got five minutes."

: : :

Micah and Hannah  
Primatech Headquarters  
Hartsdale, New York  
March 31, 2029

Inside Micah's office, Micah and Hannah stared at computer monitors. The former was sitting at his desk and the latter on the floor. Their identical screens showed a simple explorer window with an ever growing list of files.

Hannah sighed with boredom and remarked, "Micah, this is like watching paint dry. In reverse."

"You wanted to help out. I thought you'd be honored. No one else gets to filter through classified data. This is top secret stuff."

"So what? You didn't bring me in until your little program finished decoding the Project Six files. This is probably nothing but XXX-filled search histories and mediocre secret agent novels."

"People writing novels on company time would use it as an escape. We actually have secret agents here. It's probably sci-fi alien stuff."

"Color me intrigued," Hannah noted dryly.

"I'll have you know this little program I wrote analyzes data on a heuristic level to determine its file type by its structure alone."

"We've had programs like that for forty years. Plus, Primatech uses an internal file system that _you_ designed; it has file type information in the header and null-point EOF delimiters."

Micah remained speechless.

"I'm a smart girl, Micah. Don't worry; your job is safe. That's the extent of my knowledge about your computer system. You know us empaths. We're jacks-of-all-trade."

The wall monitor closest to the door beeped, alerting Micah that he was being summoned by Molly, a red message indicating it was urgent. He rushed from his desk and opened the video conference window. Molly was calling through her mobile, stating, "Project Six is in active engagement. I need you yesterday."

Micah nodded and curtly told Hannah, "Watch the file decoder while I'm gone. Smart girl like you should be able to troubleshoot any issues."

"You got it, Boss," Hannah replied with a mock salute.

Thirty seconds after Micah walked out the door, the decoder spat out another file, which a window identified as an image file, which was inside a folder labeled "Rossi Project." Hannah's curiosity got the better of her and she opened the file.

"Huh, when was Aunt Claire ever—" Hannah's comment stopped dead when her eyes noticed the image's metadata. The Rossi folder filled with more files, which Hannah began to open as they appear, each one causing her face to turn whiter and her hands to shake even more.

: : :

Madison Square Garden  
March 31, 2029

A white ambulance appeared out of nowhere in shadows of the Meyers Parking Garage. It quietly pulled out of the exit and then turned on its lights and siren. In the front seat, Peter Petrelli, wearing an EMT uniform made a left turn onto 31st Street and headed toward Madison Square Garden, less than a block away. In the back of the vehicle was Claire Bennet, putting on a similar uniform over her body armor.

One block north, a police cruiser appeared in the exit of the parking garage for the Hotel Pennsylvania. Gabriel and Noah Gray, in police uniforms, drove onto the street and made their way to the arena.

The outside of Madison Square Garden was uninhabited, but there was an ominous feeling in the air. Ushers raced out of the front doors, only to meet two cops and two paramedics.

Gabriel spoke to one of the ushers, a man in his seventies, "That walkie-talkie on?"

"Yeah," the nodded.

"Good. Get the rest of your people outside and lock these doors. We'll go in and get things under control. There should be an FBI agent here shortly, name of Jenny Kirk."

The usher nodded quickly. As the foursome walked in the door, the usher shouted out a question, "How'd you get here so fast?"

Gabriel paused for a long time, nearly caught, "This is the NYPD, buddy."

The usher actually saluted. "God bless you, son."

"God bless you," Gabriel replied.

As they approached the ice rink, the noise level rose dramatically. The team couldn't yet see inside the arena, but they heard the screams of terror. Claire made a hard turn toward the stairs. Peter raced around to the other side, which Gabriel and Noah divided, spacing themselves out near the exits.

As he walked, Peter relayed through a com in his ear, "Molly, this is Peter, we're in position."

"Okay," Molly's voice sounded from the earpiece, "there's no room for error here; you four are all we've got, so stick to the plan."

Claire walked along the scaffolding, high above the ice rink. She peered down, noting four figures. "Molly, this Claire, I've got confirmation of the Sixers. It looks like COF has already infected a lot of people. They're trying to rush the exits. Boys, what are you seeing?"

Noah answered, "The exits have been blocked by the fire doors. I can't open them but there's always the 'manual' release."

"Don't," Molly voice came over the com. "We need to contain the outbreak. COF takes at 24 hours to kill, so we can work it from there. The last thing we need is the Sixers flying into a mad panic. Claire, I can sense Appleby in there; do you have a visual?"

"Yeah," Claire replied, "it's not easy, though. She's wearing all white."

Appleby was dressed more for a shopping trip on Fifth Avenue than for a hockey game; her outfit consisted of an ivory blouse and white pants under a cream overcoat. Her hair was done in an elaborate bun, held in place by a gold coronet band. A white purse, adorned with the black Sagittarius logo, was hanging on her arm.

Appleby was ordering around the other three. She directed Seuss to the cowering masses. He didn't do much but walk through the aisles, but a dozen fistfights started in his wake. A mosh pit erupted as he passed behind the home team's box. He walked slowly, letting blood spattered on his red polo and white chinos. A man with a cut on his cheek landed on him, and Seuss was forced to wipe the blood off of his arm, revealing a tattoo: a red maple leaf superimposed over two cross swords.

"Do the other team," Appleby remarked dully, pointing to the visiting team. She was uninterested in the fights, instead looking around as if waiting for some sort of sign.

Seuss looked up at the team, in their blue and white jersey, and flatly refused, "I ain't messing with my Leafs. They're my home team."

Appleby surveyed the brawling Rangers, noting, "Who do you think they were?" She turned around without waiting for an answer, asking Wilson Chow if he was enjoying himself.

Chow, dressed in ripped black jeans, a threadbare black concert tee-shirt for the band Lady Justice, and well worn-in black high-tops, didn't respond, just slid his right hand along the floor, watching it explode in puffs of air, throwing debris at the fearful audience. Lying on the ground, dead or unconscious, were security guards with missing limbs and cavities in their torsos, which Chow went out of his way to avoid looking at.

Joseph Ghali just stood at the edge of the rink, looking up at the cowering masses, who stared at him as if he were a monster. He muttered to himself in a British-tinged Egyptian accent, sadly, "They must think that I'm a terrorist."

Like Appleby, he was well dressed, clad in a mint green silk button-up shirt and brown slacks adorned with a skull belt buckle. Still talking to himself, he muttered, "I've never it seen it spread so quickly."

Appleby overheard, "So it's going well?"

"'Well' is a relative term. I do wish we knew the rest of the plan…"

Before Appleby had a chance to respond, she was knocked over by Claire landing on top of her, injecting her with a syringe. The large hole in Claire's neck, along with the dozens of injuries she sustained in the fall, quickly healed.

"So, Molly, what was the point of that?"

Outside in the parking lot, Molly replied, "It's an evolutionary thing. Humans don't instinctively look for dangers above them." She got some strange looks from the police. She flashed her fake FBI badge again, and they pretended to be interested in other things. The captain made another call, which was answered by Micah on his intercept phone, who was sitting in the passenger seat of Molly's Mamixa, pretending to be dispatch at the FBI's New York office.

Before the Sixers had a chance to get over their shock concerning the flying girl, Noah, Peter, and Gabriel all leapt through the glass onto emptied sections of the stadium seating.

Molly's voice came through the com, "I'm not sensing any drowsiness in Appleby. Did you sedate her?"

Claire sheepishly replied, "Change of plans, boss. I actually injected her with an ability suppressant Mohinder derived from Shanti blood."

There was radio silence while Noah, in an attempt to reach Seuss, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the dozens of rage-maddened hockey fans who Seuss incited to keep the indestructible agent away from him. The veteran kept a soldier's fighting stance, though.

Molly's voice returned, "That's a brilliant plan. But why keep me in the dark?"

"Said the pot to the kettle."

"Touché. How much of the suppressant do you have?"

"Just two doses," Claire answered.

"Okay, but no more surprises."

"In that case," Noah remarked, taking a break from his attempts to move and not maim the mob of crazies attacking him, "I have to apologize in advance."

"Noah, what are you talking about?" Molly scolded.

Noah didn't reply, just went back to pushing his way through the belligerent crowd while breaking as few bones as possible.

"Gabriel, what is your son up to?"

"Beats me, boss," Gabriel noted as he telekinetically tossed Chow across the room. Chow pulled out a gun in his left hand and picked up a box of Cracker Jacks in the other, which quickly morphed into a second firearm and started shooting Gabriel, who rushed him, hoping to get hit by as many bullets as he could, rather than let any strays hit the crowds.

He got close enough to grab him, but Chow laid his hand on Gabriel's arm, causing it to explode off. Though it regrew a moment later, Chow was successful in getting himself released. Gabriel seethed, "You'll have to do better than that."

Chow touched the ground between Gabriel's legs, causing an explosion that threw the agent backwards.

Peter faced down Ghali, holding out a tranq gun. Ghali stared back, unmoved. "You're not firing," he observed, "which means that you're not confident in your aim. I don't know what you don't get closer, improve your chances of hitting me. Oh, yes, I do. You know I'm the Plague. You're not sure how close you can get and not get infected. To tell you the truth, neither do I. I'm assuming you're Special. He said the people who'd come after us would be. So, whatever your trick is, it's not going to help you, is it?"

"On the contrary, I do have something up my sleeve." He released the gun, which floated in the air rather than falling. It fired on its own, the improperly aimed dart flew past Ghali's head, looped back around, and stopped an inch away from his forehead. "The reason I'm delaying is…" Peter taunted.

Appleby fell onto the ice, unconscious. A few feet away, Claire put her outstretched leg down. She tossed a syringe over toward Peter. Not thrown far enough, it would have smashed to pieces on the ice had it not floated through the air and impaled Ghali in the arm.

"…I needed the right juice," Peter remarked, "you see, we don't want to put you to sleep, we want to defang you." The dart, which was hovering near Ghali's face, swooped down and stuck him in the jugular.

Peter looked up to where Gabriel was grinning, by his side Chow kneeling face-forward, his hands frozen to the ice.

"What?" Gabriel defended himself, "what stops us from defanging _and_ putting him to sleep? Speaking of which, Claire Bear, why not just tranq Mrs. Prissy-Pants?"

"You can't become too reliant on your powers."

"Says the girl whose ability prevents her from losing a fight," Noah protested through the throngs of violent spectators that had all but dog-piled him to the ground.

Peter grabbed his tranq gun from where it was still floating in the air and shot a dart at Seuss, whose attention was focused on keeping Noah at bay. After a moment, the spectators became less and less vicious until the finally released Noah, muttering apologies as their anger dissipated.

"You've got a gun, Noah," Peter chastised his nephew.

Noah pulled out both a tranquilizer pistol and his sidearm.

"That was easy," Gabriel remarked, noting their adversaries were all disposed of.

"Too easy," Peter added.

"Don't say that, Uncle Pete," Noah yelled, "Don't you ever watch movies?"

"He's right, Peter," Claire noted, "our job's less than half down. We've still got a stadium full of people." She pointed up at the crowds, who were just as frightened by the agents as they were of the Sixers, and many of them were ill with the effects of Ghali's infection. "Gabriel, Peter, could you send me to the announcer box. I need to calm down these people, let them know what—" Claire's instructions were cut off mid-sentence as she had a coughing fit which knocked her to the ground.

"I was too close to Ghali when I—" she whispered hoarsely.

Peter announced into his com, "Molly, it's Claire; she's…"

"I know," Molly cut him off, "I can feel it. I want you all to get as far away from Claire as you can. We'll work up a solution from here."

Gabriel and Noah followed the command, though Noah grabbed the syringe from Ghali's neck as he passed. Peter, on the other hand, ran to hold Claire's weakening body.

: : :

Hannah Petrelli  
Micah's Office  
March 31, 2029

There were twelve monitors on the walls of Micah's office, and six more sitting on his desk. Everyone of them was being used by Hannah, who had pulled up dozens of files from the notebook computer on the floor.

She sat on the floor, in tears, shaking, holding a tablet computer dispalying a single image of Claire Bennet from 2012, seven months pregnant.

: : :

Madison Square Garden  
March 31, 2029

"What are our options?" Peter cried over the com, holding Claire in his arms.

"I'm not dead yet," Claire tried to joke.

"We're setting up a mobile clean room as we speak," Molly replied, "I'll have Misha teleport Claire out of there and we'll irradiate her."

Claire rolled herself off of Peter's arms and began to hack up various organs.

"Don't bother," Noah proclaimed. He then proceeded to swoop in and inject Claire in the arm with a syringe of what appeared to be blood.

"What was that?" Peter cried. Molly echoed Peter's question.

"Antibodies for COF."

"There's no such thing," Peter replied, "No one's survived long enough to produce them."

"I did," Noah replied. After a pause, he added, "Well, rather, I _didn't_ survive. Long story short, I injected myself the other night. I died. I came back. Now my blood is magic like hers."

Peter let out a sigh of relief. Molly started screaming through the com, causing all the agents to switch their coms off. Peter hugged his nephew. "You should have let me and Claire help you. How'd you even figure out how to test your blood for the antibodies?"

"Huh? Yeah, I was just playing a hunch. I just assumed I'd adapt antibodies." His voice trailed off as he watch Claire continue to vomit.

Peter's face drop and he ran to Claire, who held up a hand. "It's okay. He assumed right. I can feel my body overwhelming the COF. Don't expect these quick results on the rest of them, though." After wiping herself off the best she could, Claire turned her com on, where Molly was still giving a lecture, and cut her off, "Molly, Noah was right. Set up that clean room and put about twenty injection kits in. Have Misha teleport Peter into it to collect the supplies and teleport him back here. We'll start inoculating the infected. Get some ambulances. These people will need a few days to recover."

Noah turned on the com and requested, "Since I'll be donating gallons of blood here, could you put a couple of snacks in there? A couple of large carnivore pizzas from Zatta's Pizza, extra mushrooms. Maybe a case or two of various snack cakes. We're inside a stadium, so there's pretty much unlimited popcorn, pretzels, and hotdogs, so don't bother with that. Ooh, and an apple."

"An apple?" Gabriel remarked with amusement.

"I'm trying to eat healthier," Noah replied.

"Well, it looks like the crowd has calmed down." The hockey fans were no longer clawing at each other trying to get out, but were still eyeing the agents warily.

Gabriel noted, "Well, while they're still calm, let's proceed with the cover story and get the infected some help."

There were four distinct _pop_s in rapid succession, accompanied by four spurts of blood from the bodies of the Sixers. Peter and Claire rapidly ran to Appleby and Ghali to investigate. Noah and Gabriel took defensive position, pulling out firearms.

Gabriel screamed over the com, "Molly, we have shots fired. Targets are the Sixers. All four appear to be hit."

"How many shooters?" Molly asked.

"No visual," Gabriel responded, scanning the arena, "there's no way one person shot all four of these people. The bullets would have had to have come from different directions. Theory One: The subject could have superspeed, but must have had expert aim, too. Theory Two: A professional hit squad…"

"Save it for later," Molly instructed, "the Sixers?"

"I don't feel a pulse," Peter remarked with his fingers on Ghali's neck. He noted the hole above Ghali's heart, where a large pool of deep crimson was staining the front of his shirt.

"The same with Appleby," Claire remarked, turning over the woman and finding no damage to the back of her blouse. "No exit wound."

"Don't bother," Molly's voice relayed over the com, "they're gone. I can't feel them. Noah, Gabriel, find those shooters."

Peter studied the wound on Ghali's chest carefully, "Claire, this isn't an entry wound. This is an exit wound."

"How do you have an exit wound with no entry wound?"

Gabriel replied immediately, "Small explosive devices inside the chest. I'm the only one who would notice, but they spoke of a second party who wasn't present. Appleby may have been leading this team, but they've got a boss."

: : :

Alex and Monica  
Primatech Headquarters  
March 31, 2029

"I can't reach Molly," was the first thing Monica said as she walked into the door of Alex Woolsly's office.

"Good evening to you to, Miss Dawson," Alex replied.

"This is serious. I can't get a hold of her."

"If you can't reach Molly, it means she has an important project she can't be disturbed."

"She'll want to be disturbed for this. You're a department head; it means you can get through in an emergency."

"I'm the HR Head. That's a technicality."

"Look at this," she shoved a flash drive at Alex, who sighed at tapped his screen, allowing the wireless connection to grab the data off the drive.

"What am I looking at?" he asked.

"The largest corpus that has ever been assembled."

"Wait a second," Alex remarked, adjusting his glasses, "I know this grouping of files. Those are all missing employee cases." He flipped through files, "They must go back fifteen years. This many? That's gotta be most, if not all, of the unsolved agent disappearances. What's the crux group?"

"No crux group. A single file is the link between all of these files."

"Gideon Davenport," Alex read, "how is he connected to all these people?"

"He's an anti-Special minister. I investigated him back in 2012. I requisitioned a web skimmer to watch his address changes. For the past seventeen years, they correspond perfectly with the disappearances of Specials. I think this guy is responsible for 95 percent of all disappeared Specials in the last two decades."

"That's impossible," Alex replied, "that program is not foolproof."

"I included the building plans for all his houses. I dug up some old psych profiles. I included congregation lists for his churches. Everything points to him. He's even sent up a dozen red flags in Project Six."

"How could we have missed this?"

"I don't know. I don't care. Now, can you call Molly?"

"Watch me," Alex replied, dialing on his screen.

Molly replied viciously, "This better be important, Alex. Project Six is blowing up in my face."

"Miss Dawson has uncovered what seems to be a major conspiracy. It relates to Project Six somehow."

"How?"

"I don't know," Monica answered through Alex's connection, "all I know is I want to go to this address: 1910 Laughlin Lane in Montauk."

Molly didn't reply for a long time.

"Molly, I don't think you understand the importance."

"Go," she replied softly, "go now. Take help. We'll be there soon. And Monica…"

"Yeah?"

"Hurry. Your brother and Evie are there."

: : :

A/N: So, it appears I can't write dramatic action. It's got to have an edge of comedy to it. Oh, well, you know what they say, it's always darkest before it goes pitch black. Consider yourself warned.

Started 5/2/2010. Finished 8/7/2010.


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